


Lady Montilyet's Impressions of One Frustrating Herald

by brightstarff



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/F, canon sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3617403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightstarff/pseuds/brightstarff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josephine is used to reading people at a glance, figuring out their game, but the Herald poses a problem: Josephine constantly has to revise her first impressions. Canon-ish exploration (with liberties taken) of how Josephine views the Inquisitor. F!Inquisitor/Josephine Montilyet, F!Lavellan. (x-posted on fanfiction.net)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been waiting for an invitation to AO3, and now that I have an account, I'll be putting up the first ten chapters of this fic. After that, I'll be posting about one chapter a week.

There are many first impressions of the Herald, and Josephine finds herself constantly revising her mental description of her. The first-her lack of confidence. Josephine secretly finds this troubling and, despite her calm confidence in her own diplomatic abilities, she's simply not sure how effective the Inquisition will be with such an uncertain figurehead.

And an elf, no less, she thinks, wondering briefly if she has somehow incurred the wrath of some divine force and is now being sorely tested.

The second impression comes only moment later over an argument about the Inquisition and the best course of action—that, perhaps, this quiet, unassuming woman may be what they need after all. Josephine spends her life analyzing the secrets hidden in the social games other play. The Herald has none. Her calm, clear eyes reflect nothing but honesty. "I don't know," she says when asked if she was truly saved by Andraste herself.

At that moment, Josephine revises her early impression of the Herald. It's not a lack of confidence; simply an uncompromising integrity. No games, no boasting. Just truth, or as close to the truth as she can go. It would certainly make Josephine's job easier if the Herald told anyone listening she was Andraste's chosen, but Josephine can work with this. People always like an underdog. Some people, anyway.

In fact, she increasingly finds that, at least when it comes to the residents of Ferelden, she hardly needs to try. Time and again the Herald retrieves someone's missing Druffalo, or puts herself in between a rift and local communities. She asks nothing in return but support in fighting against the gnawing gap in the sky. Nothing for herself. No games. Josephine worries what will happen if their Herald gets herself seriously injured or killed before they even have time to approach the Breach, but there's nothing to do about it. They need support and they don't have the resources to win it any other way than this deceptively slight, calm woman who somehow enchants everyone she meets.

The nobles, of course, are a different story, but Josephine knows how to handle them. She does try to warn the Herald at every opportunity, though, whom to avoid.

* * *

A third impression: the Herald, knowingly or not, understands how to gain loyalty. Josephine has discovered something else, besides the constant self-sacrifice, that makes the Herald such a charismatic figure: an intense and earnest interest in the lives of those around her. It is not uncommon for her to hear a familiar voice inquiring about someone's life back home and how they came to be part of the Inquisition. When she finds herself on the receiving end of such questions, she feels a bit flustered. Lady Lavellan has a way of making one feel like the only important thing in the world. She can't believe the Herald doesn't have something better to do than ask her about her family and how she met Leliana.

Perhaps she just wants to ensure her loyalties, Josephine thinks at the end of the conversation, asserting firmly that she would not be here if her allegiance truly lay with Orlais. Just a simple matter. And the Herald asks nearly everyone these questions.

Still, something in the intent gaze had made her feel...almost like being the center of attention at a ball, but without the games and mystery. For the first time in a long while, Josephine feels interesting.

It doesn't hurt when the Herald bursts in during an argument with Marquis DuRellion, partially mitigating some of the diplomatic conflict. Josephine handles it mostly, of course, but for a brief moment, she and Lady Lavellan make a spectacular team, forcing the Marquis to back down.

There was no reason for the Herald to have intervened, and a slightly abashed lowering of the eyes tells Josephine she knows it, but Josephine appreciates the gesture all the same. If it were anyone else, she might feel slighted, or doubted, or condescended to, but for the Herald, she makes an exception.

It will be the first of many exceptions Josephine makes for Lady Lavellan.

* * *

Self-deprecating, humble, frustrating—more traits to her ever-lengthening mental list on the Herald. Annoyingly, she can't even bring herself to be entirely angry about these qualities. Now, though, she finds herself growing frustrated when the woman merely shrugs off any implication that some of the people of Haven were giving her a difficult time. Josephine tries to ask delicately, but the Herald laughs, a small, fragile sound. "Nothing I haven't heard before," she says with a sad smile that grips Josephine's chest. The glow from Josephine's fire gilds the elf's angular features, highlighting her high cheekbones. Privately, she thinks some of Lady Lavellan's mysterious charm comes from those cheekbones, the strong jawline. There's a certain beauty or handsomeness about her, a strength overlaid with gentleness.

The thought only bothers her more. She wants to shake the calm out of the Herald, shake it down and out of those eyes, down the sharp cheekbones to someone else who could surely afford to bear the burden more than this woman, who already has the weight of the world.

Why doesn't she understand that it is increasingly difficult to win support for her at court if all people see are the tips of her ears? Josephine huffs to herself, scribbling fierce notes, and determines she'll simply have to take walks more frequently and stamp out the disrespect herself.

"They don't owe me anything," the Herald says. "I don't remember what happened, but I know this isn't something I did." She waves her left hand. "This isn't mine. I haven't-"

Josephine lays her quill down harder than she intended and the tip breaks with a loud snap, halting the Herald mid-sentence. "I hope you are not about to suggest you have done nothing of import for Thedas." Really, how could one person be so...so...dense? "You owe these people nothing, yet you repeatedly risk your well-being and safety in order to attract more of them, and then they act insufferably." The Herald's eyes grow slightly round, and Josephine immediately feels abashed at her outburst.

"Forgive me, Your Worship." Josephine ducks her head and searches around for a new quill. "I cannot imagine what burdens you carry." Avoiding the other woman's eyes, she returns to her work. "But I think it would be helpful for our troops if you, perhaps, gave yourself more credit for your efforts." Right, the troops-it is the only logical reason for her distress at the Herald's modesty, but she feels that's not all. She can't put her finger on it and it frustrates her.

There is a long silence, only broken by the crackling of the fire. Josephine knows the Herald is studying her and feels her skin prickle slightly.

Finally, the Herald murmurs, "Of course." Another pause. "I will leave you to your work, Ambassador." Josephine looks up in time to see the Herald duck her head briefly before vanishing out the door.

They do not speak until the next war council, amidst an argument over a choice of allies between mages and templars, neither ideal. Josephine amends her earlier impression of the Herald as working to charm the masses with her sacrifices. When the Herald chooses to attempt to recruit the mages, Josephin realizes that Lady Lavellan has, all along, been protecting those who could not protect themselves. She thinks to all of the elf's demurring over her contributions, and realizes it stems, in some part, from a fierce belief that those who are able should, and must, protect those who are unable to protect themselves.

The mages have certainly been a wronged group.

She knows that's not the only reason for the Herald's decision, of course; the mages would certainly be helpful in closing the Breach for good, nor are they totally helpless without the Inquisition. But something essential about the Herald's motivations has finally become clear to her.

* * *

And, of course, the Herald nearly gets herself killed. Again. In fact, she comes so close to doing so that an entire alternate future apparently occurs where they all believed she was dead. Josephine finds this highly disturbing. It's one of her worst fears, that they would have to try to continue the Inquisition without the Herald of Andraste, losing with her all of the support and future support they would have had, losing themselves to the dark green eye gazing at them from the heavens.

They find, too, that there is some greater threat behind the appearance of the Breach. Of course. Something more terrifying than the sky being swallowed up, something so powerful it can give others the ability to transport the Herald randomly in time.

Josephine feels slightly hysterical. She realizes she needs to calm down, but she thinks, too, of the way the alternate Leliana had sacrificed herself so readily for the Herald. More distressingly, she nearly understands the sentiment now-knows that without the Herald, they would not only lose their support, but their morale. Their hope. And there is something about her endless giving, bravery, and nobility that makes people want to throw themselves in front of any attacks aimed her way. Not that she would ever let them in this reality if she could help it, of course.

Resentfully, Josephine adds "stupidly noble and courageous" to her growing list of impressions of the Herald. Petty revenge, and hardly an insult, but it gives her a sense of satisfaction.

* * *

Yet again, Josephine finds herself revising her opinion of the Herald.

She is a  _terrible_  flirt, she comes to find. Terrible in both of its meanings. She hears rumors that she charms nearly anyone she meets with flattery, the ever-energetic Scout Harding laughing into a drink about the harmless, gentle flirtations the Herald sends her away before each mission. "She asks, 'Are you worried about me?' And I'm all, 'Well, someone has to be!' You should really see her charge into some of these places, you know...It's really something. Someone's gotta make sure she knows what she's getting into."

Josephine thinks it's quite childish to brag about one's encounters with the Herald for a party story, but she finishes her conversation with the tavern keeper, having gotten the information she wanted, and leaves hurriedly.

And then, one day, the Herald stops by to discuss the Chantry after over-hearing a conversation about Lyrium. In the midst of her explanation about the use of customs, the Herald suddenly interjects. "How did someone so lovely and selfless get into Orlesian politics?"

Josephine loses track of the conversation, instantly flustered. She hadn't expected Lady Lavellan to try her terrible flirting with her, of all people. Their conversations, while occasionally bordering on banter, have rarely entered into friendliness, much less anything...more. Josephine is hardly one of the Herald's warrior companions, with whom she seems to banter so easily. But here they are, the Herald's high cheekbones lit by the fire, this time the dappled light casting a mischievous glow, and Josephine stammers out a hasty reply before rushing back to her desk. Really, she thinks, what a silly thing to say in the middle of a discussion about the Chantry, of all things. And why does she is she even thinking about her cheekbones?

She knows that her skin has heated, and hopes the somewhat dim lighting of the room conceals it as they discuss Lady Lavellan's continued hedging about the question of Andraste and the Mark.

Perhaps this is the game the Herald plays, she thinks. A game of charm, advance and retreat, avoiding any firm ties. It is not a game Josephine is used to, and so she decides with a nod that it is best to ignore it. It certainly doesn't mean anything, and she has no idea what Lady Lavellan's...inclinations...are anyway.

The interaction troubles her earlier revisions and amendments. Were her initial impressions of simple honesty wrong?

Is it even dishonest to flirt a bit harmlessly? Perhaps the Herald merely needs to relieve stress by flirting harmlessly. She clearly has a hidden, mischievous side Josephine wasn't expecting.

A tiny part of her wants to say, as the door closes behind the elf, that Scout Harding isn't the only one who worries. But she has no helpful information to offer for the battles, only influence and intrigue and so far, she's not sure how much Lady Lavellan cares for such things. Josephine closes her mouth with a click and the moment is gone.

It was a stupid sentiment, anyway, she tells herself. What right does she have to worry about the Herald anyway? They are barely even friends.

She does not have a moment alone with the Herald for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to go off canon in some parts as I imagine Josephine's reactions during scenes she's not really featured in. This one got a bit introspective. I hope you enjoy!

She nearly, nearly loses sight of the woman. For a brief moment, she sees only the Herald of Andraste, the mark, the power.

They sealed the breach. It seems impossible, but it happened. Everyone was outside celebrating, and she stayed in the Chantry, writing memos. Regret feels heavy in her chest now, as she wonders if, perhaps, she would have had one last moment with the Herald before this had she taken the night off for once. Before the horrors of death, demons, screams, and pain. Before the stupid, stupid nobility of one stubbornly heroic elf.

In this moment, fleeing up into the hills, Josephine pauses, out of breath. She looks down at the scene below and sees, for the first time, what those who call her the Herald of Andraste must see: something more than mortal, something legendary, extraordinary.

Then Leliana appears next to her and the illusion vanishes. She remembers with a cold, piercing shock that the tiny figure down there is mortal. Lady Lavellan stands, sword bared, alone, facing Corypheus and the huge dragon, a tiny and frail speck against the immense darkness.

A hand on her arm. "Josie." An urgent shake. "Josie, come!"

She resists, unable to look away from the scene below. Snow swirls around them and the horror seems to slow everything down. "How could we have left her?" she muses to herself, barely realizing she's speaking out loud.

"Josie." Leliana's voice begins to sound panicked. "Josephine, there may be demons or an avalanche or...or..." She trails off, managing to pull the ambassador along a few more feet into the mountains. "We cannot waste what she is sacrificing for us." The ambassador knows Leliana is confused by her reaction. Normally Josephine is calm, collected, rational. Normally, she would accept the sacrifice of one for many.

Josephine doesn't really understand what's changed herself. She turns to march forward, feeling like a great weight is trying to pull her back to the stand off between one, small, brave woman and great darkness. Somewhere, something has shifted in her mind: though she knows it's hopeless, she can't help but feel that if anyone were to get out alive...

Silly girl, she chastises herself. What would you do? Charge into the fight and talk Corypheus to death?

Everyone has a role. Right now, hers is to follow the others to safety and begin rebuilding after such a horrible tragedy. She tries not to think of the lives already lost, and she tries, especially, to ignore the one that may yet slip away, a fragile life like firelight.

She tells herself that her eyes are burning because of the dry and unforgiving wind.

When the earth rumbles and the ground quivers beneath her feet, when a far-off mountain unleashes an angry torrent of snow down into the wasted valley, Josephine feels the piercing hope inside her vanish. Even Leliana seems to shrink beside her with a small gasp. They can barely see the avalanche behind them, now so far into the mountains that Corypheus' dragon looks like a mere dark speck against the empty sky.

They finally reach the campsite and Josephine nearly buckles under exhaustion, ignoring the frantic activity of the soldiers and workers around her as they sort the materials they could save from Haven. The sounds are overwhelming to her ears, which feel on fire from the persistent, harsh cold. Leliana has moved away to speak with Cullen. They beckon her forward.

Roles and duty.

When the Iron Bull, Dorian, and Sera stumble into the campsite some time later, she must turn away to conceal the frustrating burning in her eyes. Stupid, stupid, self-sacrificing, noble woman. She has even sacrificed herself for those who could best defend themselves. The three have only a disjointed tale of demons and the Herald's hands, pushing them down into an underground passage ahead of herself. None of them realized she wouldn't be following immediately.

Josephine allows herself a moment of weakness as a still, sad silence falls over the camp with a scattering of snowflakes.

Roles and duty. She repeats this to herself over and over again, trying to convince herself that perhaps this is, or was (her hand clenches briefly against her face), the Herald's role. And her own has not yet finished.

Roles and duty.

Turning back to Cullen, Leliana, and Cassandra, she focuses on damage-control and short-term strategy for the Inquisition.

She tries to ignore the hollow weight in her chest.

* * *

Josephine is not there when they find her. Roles and duty, and so she only catches from afar the great flurry of activity, only notices the crowd gathering when the distant sounds of shouts and excited motion reach her position under a tent, writing memos.

As she stands, she feels a thrill of emotion settle over the camp and the weight in her chest lifts, but she doesn't dare hope. She walks to the center of the site and sees a huddle of figures pass by, one carrying an all-too-familiar sword.

Her breath catches.

And there, in the center, a familiar figure, pale and bloodied, being carried limply into the site.

Alive, she thinks to herself, understanding now the excitement. Alive. (Is that her heart, she wonders, as she feels a strange jolt in her chest?)

She hears the story over and over again from Cullen some time later, once the rest of the camp has been shooed away by the anxious Solas and Mother Giselle. How the Herald came stumbling through the storm, appearing suddenly, spirit-like, limping and covered in blood, some of it hers, some not. There is an awe in his voice that was not there before.

She sympathizes. She feels giddy, and she turns her face up into the snowflakes, allowing them to land haphazardly over her eyes and face. Memos explaining the unfortunate death of the Herald to important diplomats lie crumpled at her feet, and she briefly considers burning them. Around them, the rest of the camp has turned solemn-even the Herald's return doesn't soften the terror of what they saw at Haven, and somewhere inside Josephine knows she should feel guilty for feeling this carefree.

In this moment, though, she realizes that the impressions she holds of the Herald are terribly, woefully incomplete. It is a dangerous game for Josephine to let her carefully maintained mental checklists go, but what she thinks (and feels, somewhere deep in her chest, an aching place she never knew existed) of the Herald cannot be summed up in the few phrases she's gathered. Lady Lavellan is not merely the "herald," nor merely selfless, nor merely the protector of the weak and downtrodden. Nor, even, stupidly noble (though Josephine thinks privately that she will have to reprimand the Herald...for the sake of the Inquisition, of course...that risking her life repeatedly is not entirely necessary).

What Lady Lavellan is, then, Josephine thinks with a curl of her fingertips, she hopes to find out.

She sees Cassandra and Leliana begin to enter an argument and, with a frown, Cullen pauses mid-story and goes to join them. For a moment, she allows herself a solitary moment of happiness.

* * *

 

Leader.

The thought enters her head unbidden as the haunting melody rises overhead with a chill. Goosebumps scatter up her arms and she's not entirely sure they're from the cold.

Soldiers and refugees alike kneel in front of the Herald as the song washes over them. Stifled, he words of argument and reason die in her throat. Josephine has been struck speechless few times in her life, and most of them seem to have happened in the last several months. She finds herself casting about for a description of the scene in front of her, something to write to potential allies about, but all she can think of are the stars, the bowed heads, the angular face.

Their eyes meet across the crowd and a shiver works its way up her spine. There seems to be a question there, a sort of plea—and in that question, Josephine once again sees the woman, and she feels stuck between sympathy and a hardened determination.

The Herald finally seems to understand her role. Roles and duty, Josephine reminds herself as a deep sympathy steals over her, making her eyes sting. She knows it's not an easy burden, being responsible for so many others' hope, but this is what they need. A leader, someone to inspire them, challenge them. Someone who can make the darkness and horror recede beneath a blinding light of hope.

She knows it's not easy. Lady Lavellan's pale eyes look desperate, tired, the face still sunken after the ordeal with Corypheus.

Roles and duty. Josephine stares back unflinchingly, then reclines her head slightly.

It is not the answer the Herald wants, but it's the one she gets, and it's the truth. Her eyes seem to shutter closed and she turns back to those kneeling before her, seemingly stunned into silence.

Later, Josephine finally lets herself grieve. Hidden towards the back of the makeshift camp, Lady Josephine Montilyet weeps over a stack of half-hearted memos and letters. She doesn't know why the tears fall so quickly, but they inconveniently mar the paperwork she's trying to complete. She's huddled just inside a low-hanging flap of tent, only the lantern light for warmth. She feels the privacy is worth the numb chill overtaking her fingers and the stiffened grip on her quill. The song seems to have found the memories of those they had lost that night and drag them painfully into the open. She has kept careful lists in her mind of all the members of the Inquisition, even those primarily with them as refugees, and she wipes the tears away in hasty frustration as she realizes they will need to find replacements for some critical roles.

Those eyes avoid hers, now, trying to run from a truth (or maybe a few truths, something in her chest murmurs) they can't avoid any longer. Something that they read in Josephine's gaze the night of the song.

Under that tent, in the cold and the dark and the uncertain, Josephine feels alone for the first time.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes the Herald several days to recover enough for the journey ahead. After many meetings between Josephine, Cassandra, Leliana, Cullen, and the Herald, their belongings are finally sorted and they set out, Solas and Lady Lavellan leading the way, scouting ahead for days at a time. With little else to occupy their minds except exhaustion, the remaining Inquisition naturally turns to gossip and rumors. Josephine feels her eyebrow twitch as a pair of young soldiers whisper about the Herald and Solas.

"They  _are_  both elves, after all..."

Gritting her teeth against a remark she feels rising in the back of her throat, she tries to focus on Leliana's reminiscence of some of their more…daring escapades as young bards. Really, Lady Lavellan has barely escaped death and all the troops seem to find interesting enough to discuss is her love life, which is  _clearly_  not a priority at the moment.

Right?

"Careful, Josie-you might squeeze your poor mount to death," Leliana murmurs. Josephine feels herself redden slightly, ignoring the penetrating and frustratingly knowing gaze of her friend. She relaxes her grip on the horse, having refused to ride side saddle for the long journey.

She huffs to herself, as if trying to expel the unwanted emotions on her breath. What is she even upset about? It may be disrespectful, but hardly unexpected. She should be glad they're finally seeing the Herald as a woman rather than an abstract, holy figure. Indeed, the elf has grown nicely into the role as leader, and it's something Josephine's spoken at length about with Cassandra.

She should be glad about a lot of things, but she finds her mind restless and uneasy. So much of the future is uncertain, and she has much work ahead of her. She fears that after Haven, they will no longer have the power or respect necessary to forge important diplomatic ties. Their success hinges on Skyhold and on the response of one ridiculously humble elf to a new title:

Inquisitor.

Something inside is gnawing at her ribs. The heady giddiness she held only a few days prior has evaporated in the wake of uncertainty and frustration at herself and at everyone around her. Many things Josephine has held dear in her life have suddenly been turned over and dumped on their heads—influence, wealth, power. They are not inherently good things, but they are necessary for the Great Game.

Now, however, she has begun to cast these things aside. They are entering the unknown, a vast, dark space hidden somewhere behind tall peaks. No doubt her ability to play the game will prove useful, but she finds, in the Inquisition, that its use beyond diplomatic relations has run short. The Herald's earnestness has apparently spread to the rest of their forces. And she has little clue how to interact with the others around her if the game doesn't matter to them.

Leliana seems to sense her discomfort. "We'll be coming to our destination soon, Josie. Try to look a bit happier." The spymaster laughs a little at her expense, a dry laugh. Leliana has not been the same since the Divine was killed, and the thought does little to cheer Josephine. "I've told you my scouts assure us the stronghold will prove more than adequate for our purposes." After a moment, Leliana eyes her friend with a sharp look. "Do I need to find the Herald and ask her to come speak to you personally?"

Josephine splutters and her friend merely laughs, this time a more genuine one. "We can't afford to have our Ambassador sulking," Leliana reminds her and rides off to discuss something with Cullen. Probably something…murder-y, Josephine worries. "Niceness before knives!" she calls after her, and her friend waves a hand behind her dismissively in response.

Leliana is all knives. Her humor is sharp; her wit is sharp; her eyes are sharp. She is a contrast to Josephine's own gentler tactics, and the combination has always served them well. After the mess in Ferelden years ago, and after the Death of the Divine, though, Josephine has worried her friend has sharpened too much. So far, the Herald has been the only one who has restrained the spymaster's more…lethal impulses.

"Do you think they'll start a new clan once we get to Skyhold? Wait, how do elves even form clans—"

Josephine is feeling lethal impulses herself right now, but she grits her teeth and moves away from the gossiping troops. Taking Leliana's advice to heart, though, she does her best to put her fears and doubts aside. She will need to focus for their upcoming trials.

* * *

Inquisitor. A new label, a new title. Embarrassingly, she let herself shout out with the people during the cheering, a memory that makes her face feel a bit warm. She blames the nearby fire. The old giddiness seems to have overcome her again, making everything simultaneously bright and hazy.

Inquisitor. Lady Lavellan had stood there, holding the sword, finally looking like the leader they desperately need, the sunlight highlighting her strong features. Josephine has never thought of warriors any differently than any other person, but in that moment, she found herself suddenly captivated by the strength and sureness that replaced the normally somewhat withdrawn, hesitant elf. She remembers the same sureness in the set of her shoulders when facing Corypheus alone.

She shakes the images from her mind, but they persist.

Inquisitor. She likes the way the word feels, the pleasant roll she can draw out on the "r". Once again, Josephine finds that the title falls short of really encompassing the other woman, but she still likes this one a bit better. It's less abstract and more tangible. An Inquisitor is a person; a Herald may as well be a spirit. Her heart has lifted these past few days, putting things together in Skyhold, working alongside the newly proclaimed Inquisitor and the Inner Circle. Though some sort of shuttered barrier remains between herself and the Inquisitor, they've resumed a familiar, mutual respect that Josephine finds comforting.

The new title has certainly helped her negotiations. Despite the horrendous events at Haven, tales of the Inquisitor's selflessness have spread, and resources and support have come trickling in steadily.

Somehow, Josephine has ended up in the most comfortable and conveniently located room. It sits right outside the war table, and a fire casts dancing light all over the walls. Her books and records are strewn about her, a detailed history of every noble family in Orlais and of every nation in Thedas. Their presence soothes her, makes her feel more at home. The long journey full of uncertainty seems to rest entirely behind her.

"We'll need you close by for visiting dignitaries," the Inquisitor had reasoned, but there was something in her eyes that said something different. Whatever it was, it vanished in a passing shadow cast by the fire. Josephine feels something in her heart clench at the memory and she is uncertain why.

She has only a small moment to ponder such things, though, when an urgent message confirms her fears: someone has sent an assassin after the Empress. The future the Inquisitor saw seems perilously close to fruition, and the thought crawls up her spine coldly. Though the Inquisitor yet lives, the potential chaos caused by a power vacuum in Orlais may only strengthen Corypheus. And what would happen to the Inquisition then? To its Inquisitor?

When she alerts the Inquisitor, she is unsurprised to see the nobility and self-sacrifice surface again. The elf's first thought is about whether the Empress has been made aware of the attempts on her life. Josephine attempts to impress the seriousness of Orlais' disapproval, and Leliana supports her, but the Inquisitor's main goal, perhaps predictably, is to protect the Empress.

"We will need more influence in Orlais," Josephine says, ignoring Cullen's look of impatience. And what will the Orlesians think of this "Inquisitor"? She examines the handsome, angular face, framed well by two pointed ears. Calm but intense gray eyes peer back at her, sensing her study.

They will be fascinated by her, once they get past the ears. They will want to hear of her trials, her battles, they will be enamored by the romance of her adventures into the murky wilds of Ferelden. They will feel this way because they won't understand the costs and risks.

They will feel this way, Josephine knows, because she has felt that way herself, to a certain extent. Indeed, she feels it would be most impossible  _not_ to feel somewhat starry-eyed about the Inquisitor. After all, Lady Lavellan does dash off into danger at the drop of a hat, sometimes just to return a letter from someone's deceased lover. And, perhaps expectedly, she has the highest survival rate in her parties out of any company of the Inquisition. Josephine sometimes hears murmurs among the fighters and mages about a fierce loyalty and protection in the midst of battle.

Josephine tells herself it is normal to feel this way about such a charismatic leader and that it hardly means anything.

Josephine tells herself a lot of things, lately.

She has mixed feelings about bringing this person into contact with the court and the Great Game. On the one hand, the idea of the Inquisitor at a ball, entering the world Josephine has been at home in for so long…for some reason, it seems suddenly, desperately important to her. On the other hand, she is uncertain how the Inquisitor will react to the Great Game or the Great Game to the Inquisitor. The Great Game can be lethal, and she knows there is no lost love between the Inquisitor and politics.

Realizing with a start that she has been staring, she drops her gaze hastily to her paperwork, then glances up. The calm gaze is still fixed on her and she feels her cheeks heat.

In the mean time, Leliana almost looks excited at the prospect as she taunts Cullen, and Josephine sees the old gleam of intrigue come back into her face. They agree to attempt to secure more allies in Orlais before moving forward. The Inquisitor leaves swiftly, most likely to survey progress in Skyhold, but Josephine swears she catches the Inquisitor give her a last glance over her shoulder on her way out the door.

Josephine tells herself she's seeing things.

Josephine tells herself a lot of things, lately, and she's not sure all of them are true.


	4. Chapter 4

Distraction, Josephine thinks with both exasperation and a whirling glee most unbecoming of a dignified Ambassador.

The Inquisitor has taken to appearing in her office at odd moments during the day to engage in conversations about Antiva, Josephine's family, and Orlais. Not that Josephine would mind, but it seems whenever the Inquisitor enters she forgets her rigorous attention to her duties until, with an affected look of guilt that seems somewhat false, the Inquisitor bows her way out of her office and off to some duty or some dusty region to fight dragonlings and Maker knows what else. And then, of course, Josephine distracts herself from her duties by perusing memos regarding whatever quest the Inquisitor has set out on, trying to determine how dangerous it is. For diplomatic reasons, of course. The better the mission, the better she can try to woo Orlesian allies to their cause. Or so Josephine tells herself. Her duties always get done, though, and she manages to bow and curtsy as well as ever when some insufferable noble comes prancing into Skyhold. It just…takes her a little longer.

Whatever strange resistance the Inquisitor felt seems to have melted away, replaced by the earnest, interested person she had just started to know in Haven before the attack. Josephine's not sure what prompted the change, but she suspects it has something to do with the excitement and reverence for the Inquisition now permeating Thedas. Lady Lavellan must have felt, in that camp in the mountains, that the task was impossible, that she could not possibly carry the burdens and hopes of an entire continent on her shoulders, and Josephine had implicitly encouraged her to take the burden. Now, however, after assuming the title of Inquisitor, Lady Lavellan seems to have grown into the role. Even her shoulders seem a bit squarer, a bit stronger as she energetically explores the hold. Josephine has spent more time watching the Inquisitor walk than she feels is perhaps appropriate, but she decides it's her job to notice such things for the sake of the Inquisition.

Then the subject of her musings walks in, startling her into a slight blush, and her eyes trace the handsome cheekbones, the hard lines of her warrior's shoulders, the strong hands. The Inquisitor raises an eyebrow, making Josephine drop her eyes quickly, but graciously declines to comment on Josephine's suddenly flustered appearance (and Josephine wonders, secretly, how often she must look flustered in this woman's presence, how often she must look like a foolish adolescent). "Anything to report, Lady Ambassador?"

They begin to chat, again, about frustrating nobles and diplomatic concerns when, suddenly, the Inquisitor levels her with a soft but intense glance that silences Josephine mid-sentence.

"How do you stay so polite?" the elf asks, and it seems to be more than a question about etiquette and, unwillingly, Josephine remembers— _How did someone so lovely get into Orlesian politics_? And the infernal blush has returned to its seemingly permanent place of residence on her cheeks. There's an unmistakable compliment under the question, and Josephine's breath catches.

She considers her answer. It's not a question she has a ready answer for; what the Inquisitor calls politeness is, after all, simply the norm in Orlais. After a moment, she replies, "In Orlais, I had people to confide in when the nobles were…particularly difficult. It is more challenging to handle such matters here, since Leliana and I have our separate duties to attend to, and we hardly have time to trade tales."

Though she's glanced back down at her paperwork, she feels the Inquisitor's gaze on her and, as always, her skin prickles slightly in response. She revises her earlier considerations—the Inquisitor hasn't returned to the same earnest behavior as before the events of Haven. Something else has changed in the way she looks at Josephine. There is a warmth there that Josephine can't entirely blame on the fire, a warmth that melts memories of a frozen battle in the midst of imposing mountains, melts memories of loss and hurt.

She tells herself it's merely an interest in friendship, something the Inquisitor seems to be spending a great deal of time cultivating with the members of the Inquisition now that they have finally settled down in Skyhold.

The Inqusitior clears her throat and Josephine looks up, surprised when she sees those eyes look to the side, avoiding her gaze, and— _is that a blush_? No, it certainly can't be, she thinks.

"How about me?" Lady Lavellan finally murmurs, and Josephine loses the words slightly in the crackle of firewood. She must have misheard.

"Excuse me, Your Worship?"

"Why…ah," another clearing of the throat. "Why not talk to me?" Josephine's face must show a nonplussed surprise because she hurries on, nearly tripping over her words. "I can listen pretty well. You can talk to me about the nobles."

For a moment, Josephine is stunned. "I couldn't possibly burden you so," she manages, but she has placed the quill on her desk as if expecting she won't be doing more work for the near future. The suggestion baffles her. It is not something Josephine could have calculated or predicted. In what world would she have guessed that the Inquisitor would  _want_  to hear such talk, particularly with her consistent dismissal of political concerns?

"Please," the Inquisitor says, and the word acts like some sort of magic on Josephine. She is already on her feet before she has time to chastise herself for leaving her desk, or to chastise the Inquisitor for not attending to her duties. But she knows any such attempts would be half-hearted. She has often wondered, in the brief, stolen moments of conversation they've had before, what it would be like to actually spend time together. Alone, without an Inquisition member peering over their shoulders.

They end up standing on the balcony to the Inquisitor's personal quarters, and it is a warm but uncertain place, as if the Inquisitor hasn't quite decided what to make of the huge quarters yet. Josephine begins hesitantly by relating stories about the nobles, but soon finds herself telling her best tales to make the Inquisitor laugh, even if the elf doesn't quite understand the eccentric behavior involved in the Game. They spend so long on the balcony, the pleasantly cool air flowing past them and carrying their words out into the mountains beyond, that the sun begins to sink behind the peaks. Josephine realizes this with a start, and she pauses after laughing, catching her breath as the beauty of the mountains before her pierces her heart. The lowering sunrays gild the face next to her and she feels a second stab of beauty, this one bittersweet, this one complicated and uncertain and thrilling—

And Josephine stops herself there, afraid, not sure what's happening inside her, but only that she wants to keep this image and this feeling forever. She knows, however, that it can't last. Roles and duty. An impending evil seems to lie beyond the mountains, darkening with the sky, and she backs away from the railing. And, even throughout their surprisingly easy conversation, Josephine senses still a sort of distance in the other woman, a depth and complexity she hasn't been fully able to penetrate.

"I'm sorry, Your Worship; I did not realize how much time has passed. I am certain you have other duties more important to attend to. I shouldn't have kept you so long." The apology flows out of her in a rush as she turns her eyes to the ground because looking at the woman next to her is like looking, suddenly, directly into the sun and she feels uncertain and bashful. Like some sort of school girl.

"Really, Lady Montilyet," the Inquisitor says, and the smoothness of her L's make Josephine's face feel warm again, "there is no other way I would rather have spent this time."

"You are too kind," she manages in reply, and she feels the blush rise again as they make their way back downstairs. When they enter the main hall, a passing Varric gives her a wide-eyed look as they emerge from the Inquisitor's quarters. Josephine feels like she's been struck and she pauses mid-step, realizing what he's assuming. The Inquisitor seems oblivious, moving away now towards the library, perhaps to discuss something with Leliana.

With a flutter in her throat, Josephine flees to the comfort of her desk, where she can bury her head beneath enough reports to hopefully drown the image of the setting sun and the intense and confusing feeling of lazy wistfulness that has stolen over her. When the darkness and horrors return, she will turn to that image again and again in her mind: the Inquisitor turning her face into the sun, smiling at Josephine's story, the dramatic angles of the mountains reflected in the noble angles of her face, looking, for all the world, like any normal (beautiful, extraordinary) woman.

* * *

Stress-inducing, worry-causing…Josephine exhales slowly, trying to master herself. The Inquisitor is out somewhere gathering clues about the Grey Wardens, and she has a bad feeling about this whole business.

The mission has disaster written all over it. With a frown, Josephine reads over old letters from the Storm Coast that the Inquisitor collected and left in safe-keeping with her, all those weeks ago in Haven. They tell a vague story of Grey Warden activity, but with just enough sketchy detail and disappearing characters to make Josephine pause.

"My, Josie. Worried, are we?" Leliana teases her several hours later.

"Please, Leliana. I have a bad feeling about all of this."

For a second, Josephine thinks Leliana is going to taunt her again, but something in the Ambassador's face must give the spymaster pause because suddenly her features settle into a look of hardened seriousness.

"In truth, these are matters Cullen and I have considered. We need to set aside time to strategize ways to ensure the Inquisitor's well-being."

"Yes," Josephine says with a great rush of relief, no longer feeling quite as ashamed for pouring over field notes. "We gain more allies each day, and it seems reasonable that we direct some of our new resources to extra measures. And our own time."

Returning to her office with a marginal feeling of relief, Josephine turns her focus back to the duties waiting for her.

Still, though, she wonders what the Inquisitor is doing. She imagines her, small yet somehow larger than life, holding a sword and fending off indistinct and shadowy enemies.

The thought both worries and thrills Josephine, and she blames the feeling on old Orlesian tales of  _chevaliers_.

The reality, unfortunately, drives any tales of  _chevaliers_  out of Josephine's mind. Several days later, reading field reports about the conditions in Crestwood, she imagines a bleak, lifeless place, Undead lurching from victim to victim. It's the Fallow Mire all over again, except this time there are shades of something more dangerous and evil.

"Josephine," Leliana sighs when Josephine approaches her again, and Josephine knows immediately she shouldn't have come because Leliana almost never uses her full name. She stands looking down towards the Library, clutching reports in her hand, the words faded from her persistent tracing of important words. "There is only so much we can do. I've redirected more scouts to areas the Inquisitor is likely to visit, Cullen has improved our forces' defenses, and you've ensured that nobles and local residents at least give her a wide berth, and in many cases welcome her with open arms." Her old friend examines her and seems about ready to say something more, then seems to reconsider it and turns to her birds.

Josephine is still and silent, feeling both ashamed and frustrated, but the thought of returning to her desk to worry alone is unbearable.

After several moments spent this way, Leliana turns back to her. "She will be fine," she says quietly. The sharpness in her eyes has softened somewhat. "You must trust that—trust her. You must not lose hope."

Josephine nods silently, then scrutinizes her friend's face, lined in ways it hasn't been before. She worries that she ought to find more time to speak to her friend. "And you must not, either."

Leliana compresses her mouth into a thin line, but she bows her head slightly, conceding the point. She moves to stand next to Josephine, watching the activity in the Library below, Dorian's raucous mumbling conspicuously absent from the shelves.

Josephine considers that whenever the Inquisitor leaves, there is a huge, gaping silence left behind her as she whisks into the unknown with her companions. She wonders how many people they've already rescued, whether they've found lovers' lost letters, whether the darkness has threatened to overtake them yet.

And, the reports crinkling as her grip tightens, she tries to hope. She'll find it hard to do so, later, in the face of Blood Magic and demon armies. The Game may have been lethal, but it hardly conjured such nightmares. Today marks the day Josephine begins working late into the night, trying to exhaust herself to stop intrusive, horrible images and a nagging worry.


	5. Chapter 5

Legend, she'll think later.

Right now, Josephine stands from behind her desk, hearing shouts that indicate the Inquisitor and her party have returned from Adamant Fortress. She walks stiffly to her door, hearing mingled cries of celebration and of concern, and opens it hesitantly. She looks down the main hall and sees a crowd gathering. Still moving slowly, afraid of what she might see, she edges her way towards the front of the gathering, and sees the Inquisitor looking tired, leaning on a disturbed-looking Iron Bull. Josephine's hand flies to her mouth at his expression, which can only convey—fear—and it looks unnatural on his face.

What could have had such an impact on the Qunari?

"…the Fade," she hears Dorian finishing, and the murmurs around her complete the story.

"The Fade!" people whisper to one another.

"They walked through the Fade!"

"Like Gods!"

"Andraste has saved her again…"

Josephine feels a cold horror wash over her and she stares, open-mouthed, at the party, all of them looking shaken and disturbed except the Inquisitor. Lady Lavellan looks tired but has a glint of steely composure in her eyes.

There is a sudden flurry of activity from the back of the crowd. "Alright, adventure done, Inquisitor's back, everyone out of the way, move it!" Sera shouts, pushing through the crowd and rushing out the way they came. Startled into realizing how oppressive the huge crowd much feel, Josephine begins to shoo the onlookers away.

When she looks back, the Inquisitor has stood up fully and moved toward her, a slight smile twitching at her mouth. Josephine stares at her, feeling, unexpectedly, that piercing wistfulness steal over her. It is like she has been starving without realizing it, like she has been away from home and only realized what she missed once she returned. It is like staring into sunlight after days of darkness.

The Inquisitor seems too tired to notice her staring. "I've secured us new allies," she says, and Josephine thinks there may be a sheepish tone under the sentence, but she can't really concentrate because she's still amazed herself, baffled both by the news of their adventures and by the perplexing swelling in her heart. Still, even after having been parted for several days, this complicated feeling she can't, won't, put a name to. She knows her mouth is drooping open in the most undignified of ways but she can't seem to close it.

"Lady Montilyet?" the Inquisitor prompts her, but her question is drowned out by a sudden cacophony coming in from outside. Not entirely aware of her movements, Josephine follows the Inquisitor to the entrance. The sight renders her speechless again. Below her, dozens of Grey Wardens are gathered, some arguing with other Skyhold residents before falling silent at the sight of the Inquisitor.

"You…" she manages, and she thinks she would be angry if she weren't so utterly shocked by everything that has happened in the last few minutes. Weren't the Grey Wardens enemies only moments ago? The Inquisitor ducks her head, the Iron Bull laughing wildly behind them.

"I'm too old for this shit," he bellows. "If you're all set then, boss, I'm going to go drink til I puke and beat something up." He stomps past them and down the steps, people scattering out of his path as he thunders forward like a large, brick horse. The people below begin to murmur amongst themselves again, and a low hum of noise and movement steals over Skyhold.

"Well," Dorian says after a long moment, startling Josephine. "That was all good fun, but I think I'm going to go try to forget this ever happened, preferably with the assistance of alcohol and pleasant company. Pleasant company whose names I don't know, that is. Good evening, Inquisitor, Lady Ambassador." He sets off after the Iron Bull, humming a jaunty tune as he goes.

The two women stand staring out onto the ragtag collection of people, and for the first time, it strikes Josephine how ridiculous the Inquisition is, this strange group of people, elves and mages and former templars and seekers and nobles and now, Grey Wardens who had just been trying to perform a destructive blood ritual. She begins to laugh, and after a moment of stunned silence, the Inquisitor joins in, and Josephine laughs and laughs because sometimes, when nightmares happen, that's the only response that makes sense. It reminds her of a scene that seems long ago now, of a balcony, of calm blue sky and distant mountains, of laughter and warmth.

After long minutes, the laughter dies away and they stand under the calm, cold light of the distant stars. "Your Worship," Josephine says finally, "I will see to accommodations for our new allies. There may not be room here but…" Her head feels full of cotton, and she shakes it a few times to clear it. "We will consult with Cullen as to how and where we can best use them."

Lady Lavellan is silent beside her, and Josephine turns to see a weary look in her eyes. Instinctively, Josephine knows she will receive no better explanation for the events that have transpired until the next day, and so sets aside the questions burning on the tip of her tongue and a selfish desire to spend time with her.

"I will consult with Cullen and Leliana while you rest, Your Worship," Josephine corrects herself, and at first she thinks the Inquisitor will argue, but finally she nods, looking grateful.

"I'll have a report for you in the morning," she says, meeting Josephine's eyes and suddenly there is something…dark, something hungry, something desperate and pleading. What nightmares has she seen tonight, Josephine wonders, transfixed before the look vanishes in a slow blink. "Please let me know if our new recruits give you any trouble. Good evening, Lady Montilyet," the Inquisitor murmurs and, with an admirably low bow, she takes Josephine's hand and places a light kiss against it.

Josephine's heart stops and she knows her face has turned red, and the Inquisitor smirks a bit, the mischievous narrowing of her eyes returning from all those months ago. Josephine swears she sees the echo of firelight. "I've got to practice for the Ball, right?" the Inquisitor says with a distinct twinkle in her eye, but maybe it's starlight or moonlight, and then stands a bit unsteadily, and the next thing Josephine knows she's gone. And Josephine is left standing mutely at the top of the steps, feeling rather like she has just suffered whiplash.

A legend, she thinks. But more than that, to her. A woman. A complicated one, at once deep and dark and light and mischievous, noble and steady and unpredictable. One full of contradictions and paradoxes.

Perhaps she is merely too tired to be surprised, but Josephine feels no shock at all to see the Inquisitor's old humility and nobility appearing again in the report in front of her. She traces the nearly illegible words with a certain fondness, simultaneously horrified at the exceedingly dangerous and nightmarish tale they tell and awed in spite of herself. She imagines the Inquisitor hastily copying the report three times, anxious to be doing something more active, and smiles slightly at the image despite the horrors she's reading about.

Leliana paces frantically in front of her desk while Josephine reads the report, Cullen standing mutely in a far corner as if trying to avoid the Spymaster's warpath. Josephine has a feeling that the other two were able to get as much sleep as she did the night before, which is to say, very little. They had been up until dawn coordinating the movements of the Grey Wardens, and then they had woken in the early morning to find the Inquisitor's reports placed variously at their posts.

The words written in hasty scratches swirl before her eyes, and she closes them, placing the report on her desk. Leliana notices the movement and pauses, and she feels the sharp glare without needing to open her eyes.

When Josephine does not speak, Leliana prompts impatiently, "Well?"

"Well what?" Josephine says tiredly, opening her eyes to gaze back at her friend. "Have you come to discuss something in particular? I have already told you that they entered the Fade. There is more detail here, yes—"

"It was the Divine!" Leliana interrupts her, resuming her pacing. "It was never Andraste. I wanted to believe…but it was the Divine the whole time."

Josephine does not respond, knowing what's truly bothering Leliana: that the Inquisitor had been able to speak with Divine Justinia and Leliana had not.

"Does it matter?" Cullen asks, not shrinking from the seething stare Leliana sends him. He presses on. "At this point, it makes little difference who the woman with the Herald in the Fade was. So many people believe it was Andraste, that it was the Maker's will, that they would probably ignore the truth even if they had seen it themselves."

Grateful, Josephine seizes on the remark. "Cullen is right, Leliana."

"I think the Inquisitor feels differently," she says stubbornly, and Josephine acknowledges that there is truth in the statement. The report glosses much of the Inquisitor's own actions, giving very brief descriptions of the battle at the Fortress, and what must have been a last, heroic attempt to save her companions by ripping open a new rift and sending them into the Fade, away from a monstrous creature and crumbling ruins. The thought makes Josephine feel cold.

How could the Inquisitor have known it would work? How close had they been to disaster yet again? How close had she—they, she corrects herself—come to losing the Inquisitor?

Yet when the Divine enters the tale, the Inquisitor suddenly spends a great deal of space describing her assistance and the newly-remembered sacrifice that saved Lady Lavellan's life originally. Though the Inquisitor doesn't say it, there's a resigned tone in the report that reveals the Herald's own suspicions about Andraste's involvement have been confirmed. It's obvious the humility Josephine first noted is still there, underplaying her own achievements in favor of others'.

"The Inquisitor feels differently," Josephine interjects into what has become a heated argument between the other two advisors, "because she believes she is not unique." Cullen and Leliana pause and turn to her. "I think, regardless of Andraste or the Divine, we can agree she is extraordinary, whether her powers were bestowed upon her by the Maker and his bride or not. That is what matters. That is what matters to our allies, to our troops, to those who look to us for hope and guidance, and look, ultimately, to her." There is a silence after her words, and she notices Leliana's piercing gaze, searching her, and she feels exposed.

Standing, she shuffles for a particular memo and retrieves it, stepping around her desk to hand it to Leliana. Cullen deems it safe enough to approach and he reads it over the Spymaster's shoulder.

"Whatever happened or will happen, the Inquisitor's actions have finally granted us notice from Orlais," Josephine continues, glad to change the subject. "We must begin preparing for the peace talks. In doing so, we must impress upon the Inquisitor that humility is a fine line to walk in Orlais."

Leliana reads the missive from Orlais before nodding once, roughly and reluctantly. "I will speak with the Inquisitor about our upcoming mission." And, Josephine knows, question her about anything the Divine may have said.

They leave and Josephine barely makes it back to her chair before her knees give out. Her mind whirls with all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours and, somewhere in the recesses of her thoughts, she wonders how she will be able to make it through all of this.

The fighting, the horror, the long talks with nobility- Josephine can handle these things, or at least she has managed to thus far. She was already used to some of it, and the rest she has grown used to over time. But something in her chest feels heavier every time the Inquisitor leaves and returns, inevitably, with new scars and new burdens. Josephine does not understand how the Inquisitor can remain as calm as she does, and feels like shaking sense into her, to give her some degree of concern over her own mortality and sanity.

Josephine knows, of course, that this would be useless. Lady Lavellan does what needs to be done. She protects those who cannot protect themselves. She forgives those whom others would gladly outcast. And through it all, she wins the Inquisition undying loyalty.

Lady Josephine Montilyet, however, is not sure how much more she can take, especially when it seems ludicrous to worry as much as she does. The intensity of her worry frustrates Leliana and perplexes Cullen. It drains Josephine of her energy. It doesn't help that when she thinks of the Inquisitor, she has flashes of firelight and starlight and strong, noble features. Josephine thinks, bizarrely, thoughts borne of exhaustion, that Lady Lavellan possesses more nobility in her little finger than the entirety of Orlais. She sees her in her mind's eye, sword held high, her lithe figure belying a graceful strength beneath, fighting back terrors and nightmares, smiling at Josephine, bowing to Josephine, looking at her with that calm and intensely interested gaze.

Shaking herself out of long musings, Josephine determines that she should eat something for energy, even if she doesn't feel particularly hungry at the moment. She leaves her office and her tired daydreams behind her, determined to forget they ever happened. It is getting harder to deny what she suspects lies in the depths of her mind.

After returning from a brief meal, Josephine walks through the door to news that sends her heart to her throat.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next will take place primarily in the context of "Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune," the first of Josephine's personal quests. ***Spoilers*** will abound. I'm also going to be working in some stuff from Josephine's past as we move forward, which I think could have been expanded on in-game.

The Inquisitor is too kind, she thinks to herself, and it's not merely hyperbole, though Josephine does say it embarrassingly often. She knows the Inquisitor has a number of tasks to attend to besides repairing the Montilyet family fortune. That the Inquisitor would take time out to assist her…well, "kind" barely seems to do the bittersweet feeling inside of the ambassador justice, but it is the only word Josephine allows herself.

Josephine stands in Val Royeaux, the sun shining pleasantly on the ornate tiles around her. She squints into the light, her heart in her throat as she waits impatiently for the Inquisitor. She wonders whether she is more nervous to meet this Comte or to be alone (well, sort of alone, depending on the companions she brings) with the Inquisitor for the first time since their brief conversation after her return from the Fade. Feeling most undignified, she sidles closer to nearby bushes, hoping they might conceal her obvious anxiety from passersby.

She feels a fluttering embarrassment nearly every time she sees the Inquisitor, now, and it is most unhelpful when she has Inquisition matters to attend to. Even a fleeting glance over the war table nearly makes her stumble, though she maintains her professional veneer if only for the sake of Leliana and Cullen.

When she'd asked the Inquisitor for help several days ago, in the midst of the horrifying news her couriers had been killed, she wasn't surprised to receive it. What did surprise her, though, was the immediate care and action that followed. Josephine originally expected the necessary political intrigue to have curbed the Inquisitor's natural impulse towards helpfulness, but instead, she brushed it off.

"If that's what it takes to get to the bottom of this," the Inquisitor had said, shifting impatiently as if ready to venture forth immediately, "I'll meet this Comte with you."

"Oh, thank you!" Josephine couldn't help but gush in response. The news was an instant relief to the mounting anxiety that had overtaken her. "It means…" It means what, she had asked herself, pausing abruptly.

It  _could_  mean a lot of things. She looked at the woman before her, eyebrows drawn together slightly in concern, shoulders squared against some sort of potential danger. It could mean the Inquisitor was personally interested in the minute goings on in Josephine's life, even those things that lay outside the realm of the Inquisition. It meant the Inquisitor cared enough to halt her various other duties just to help Josephine.

It meant quite a lot to Josephine. It meant that the ache in her chest might be real. It meant fear, and exhilaration.

"You are too kind," she said finally, softly, embarrassingly repetitive, but it is true. The Inquisitor is too kind to a fault, and she felt herself soften her gaze, hoping to convey…something, but not too much, about what it meant to her. About what the Inquisitor means to her.

It means, Josephine brings herself back to the present abruptly, very little, realistically—the Inquisitor has taken to helping everyone in the Inner Circle. She shakes her head, feeling a sudden despair wash over her. Josephine is beginning to recognize what seems to be a school girl crush, and it simply won't do, not when the Inquisitor has only been friendly— _How did someone so lovely get into Orlesian politics_ —and helpful, as is her nature. She is, after all, Josephine thinks, watching anxiously for the tell-tale figure in the crowd, a natural hero, and Josephine is something of a damsel in distress at this juncture in time.

Oh, more  _chevalier_  stories. She rues the day she ever let herself read them. Would she have ever imagined, as a little girl, that her  _chevalier_  might be a woman, and an elf, and one of the most beloved heroes in Thedas? Well, not  _her_   _chevalier_ , of course… But surely it's only the starry-eyed imagination of the young girl buried deep inside of her, the young girl from Antiva before she became a bard, that makes her think such things. Surely Josephine, the woman, Ambassador, does not feel these undignified, childish emotions.

And suddenly she sees the now-familiar figure trotting through the crowd. Josephine stands still, not daring to move, and allows herself the guilty pleasure of watching her approach—perhaps she does feel such undignified things. It's not often she sees Lady Lavellan in full gear, since she often wears comfortable clothing inside Skyhold. The armor glints in the sunlight, momentarily blinding Josephine, but there's a part of her that wonders if that's just the effect of the Inquisitor like this, so confident, so sure, different from the sometimes uncertain and humble Lady Lavellan that haunts the corridors of Skyhold. The transformation is bewitching and blinding and the next thing she realizes, when she has blinked the dazzling light from her eyes, the elf is standing next to her, a look of concern on the handsome face.

Now, Josephine must abandon all thoughts of cheekbones and warriors and confront the unpleasant reality of their journey together. She must discard her silly notions of  _chevaliers_  and damsels (she could save herself on her own, thank you very much). The deaths of her couriers have plagued her this week, and she feels responsible and guilty, knowing they died for some unknown aggression against her and her family. Their deaths seem to weigh on the Inquisitor as well, as her mouth thins and her eyes narrow when Josephine expresses her desire to find out what happened to them.

Of course, Josephine thinks somewhat wearily. The Inquisitor would see the messengers as innocents, caught in some silly political intrigue. She wonders distantly, uselessly, if the Inquisitor would ever view her world with anything but scorn or, at the very least, confusion.

They make their way across Val Royeaux to the mansion, the Inquisitor alternately pacing ahead and behind Josephine like a bodyguard. Finally, she catches the elf's eyes and gestures next to her. "I sincerely doubt anyone would risk a full attack at daytime," Josephine says, watching the Inquisitor's eyes scan their surroundings as she falls into step beside her.

"Maybe," the other woman replies, "but I'm not taking any risks with you, Lady Montilyet."

The comment surprises Josephine, and she stammers out a brief word of thanks— _she is not some_ chevalier _,_ she reminds herself, sighing.  _"With you"_ —and what had that meant?

Very little, she insists to herself. Just kindness.

Their progress is slow through the midday crowds. Behind them, Dorian offers a loud discussion of Val Royeaux's poor imitations of Tevinter styles and Sera offers mocking imitations of his complaints. After some time, unable to stop herself, Josephine broaches the topic that has been nagging at her. "Your Worship," she says, hesitating as those light eyes fixate on her, momentarily halting the words in her throat. She clears it and forges on. "I was…" No, that's not right. It would seem too personal. "Leliana, Cullen, and I have been anxious to know how you are faring after your journey through the Fade."

The Inquisitor's face goes through an interesting mix of emotions, at first a tightening around the mouth and then a strange look of relief. "You don't need to worry," she says at last, her eyes meeting Josephine's. "I won't lie. It was a place full of nightmares—literally—and loss. We lost a good warrior." Her eyes leave Josephine's now, and Josephine knows that she is feeling regret and frustration. Stupid, stupid nobility, Josephine thinks sadly, knowing how the Inquisitor must be punishing herself for the Grey Warden's sacrifice. "But it was also a place of truth. I found out what this," she lifts her left hand, "really means. It's given me a sense of…peace, or as much of one as I can have now."

She smiles and it's a bit thin, and Josephine must stop herself from reaching out to her, offering some sort of comfort. But the two of them have barely ever touched and she fears she will overstep some sort of boundary, and the Inquisitor has opened so much of herself to Josephine in just those few sentences that she doesn't want to frighten her away.

"But enough about me," the Inquisitor says, and the moment of intimacy passes anyway. She becomes inscrutable once again. "And how are you, Lady Montilyet?" Those eyes search her and Josephine knows she's not merely asking about Josephine's health.

Sighing, the Ambassador looks ahead, seeing their destination approaching. "I am well, Your Worship," and she ducks her head to avoid the look of disbelief.

"Well, I suppose intrigue and murder might be about typical for Orlais," the Inquisitor jokes gently, and Josephine allows her a chuckle.

"My couriers died for my family, and I do not know why. It has been difficult, yes, but I am glad I will soon know the cause." It is true—without this sense of determination and purpose, she knows she would be feeling wracked by guilt.

The Inquisitor continues to study her and Josephine avoids her gaze, flushing slightly, worrying that if their eyes meet the other woman would see her anxiety, her pain, her confusion, and, most inappropriately, that wistfulness that has started to turn into something that  _wants_. Josephine wants to reach out and touch her, comfort her, be comforted by her. Josephine wants to have a moment alone without the bickering behind them. Josephine wants, and Josephine knows she should not. So she ignores it.

They come up to the mansion and are waved onwards to an outdoor corridor. Taking a few steps ahead of Josephine, the Inquisitor turns around to survey the hallway. There is a hint of amusement at the extravagances and again, Josephine wonders if she would ever see her world without scorn or derision.

Then her face turns serious. "Something feels…wrong," the Inquisitor says.

"Perhaps you are merely reacting to the eccentric pageantry of Val Royeaux," Josephine feebly attempts to tease, but she feels it as well. Something does not quite seem right, and the servants are rather skittish.

"Perhaps she is reacting to these ridiculous curtains," Dorian says, looking into windows and at the interior design with disdain. "What self-respecting noble would taint their otherwise pristine household with such monstrosities?"

Josephine chuckles despite the situation, and the Inquisitor graces her with a small smile. She feels that familiar, annoying flutter in her stomach and she scolds herself sternly.  _This is not a tale of knights and damsels. There is real danger lurking here._ It is no time to  _want._ Then they come upon a balcony, where a slim man sits investigating a cup of wine.

In the next few moments, Josephine's world will, not for the first time since joining the Inquisition, turn itself on its head.

Danger, indeed.

* * *

Afraid. It is a new qualifier for the Inquisitor, one that would surprise Josephine, somewhere, if she weren't so numb.

"'The House of Repose is hereby sworn to eliminate anyone attempting to overturn the Montilyet's trading exile in Orlais,'" Josephine reads, a breathless resignation washing over her. It's as she was beginning to expect. Wanting, needing some sort of comfort, she turns her gaze to the woman next to her, the contract shaking slightly in her hands. But when she turns, she sees not comfort in the Inquisitor's eyes, but a strange, lost look of…fear? Could it be? Even after the Fade, the Inquisitor never so much as shook, but now there is a dark desperation in her face.

"They're not just after your messengers, Josephine. They'll try for you, too," the elf says, and it is something Josephine has already known, really, since she heard the news of her couriers. So there is something in the obvious statement that makes Josephine pause in shock. Underneath it is a sort of horrified realization the Inquisitor tries to mask with calm and concern.

Her head is spinning too much, now, to really dwell on it or what it means ( _it means nothing_ , she thinks distantly). "I…I am afraid so, yes," she says, and she is reminded of that night in the mountains, after Haven, when the Inquisitor had looked to her, wanting Josephine to deny her worst fears only to have Josephine confirm them. It feels similar now, confirming what the Inquisitor knows to be true but hopes isn't, and Josephine turns away, afraid of what she would see.

To feel some measure of control as her mind begins to work through solutions, Josephine explains the intricate workings of Orlesion business practices to Lady Lavellan. There is a frustrated confusion in the Inquisitor's voice that serves as an easy distraction from the situation.

She explains, too, the beginnings of her plan to elevate the Du Paraquettes back to nobility in exchange for canceling the contract. Doing so, she pauses as she realizes the Comte sitting across from them is no Comte at all.

"You are exceedingly well-informed," Josephine says, narrowing her eyes at the man before her and smirking slightly. He is caught. Despite the situation, despite knowing her days might be numbered, engaging in the play of the Game is as exhilarating as it always has been. The now-exposed assassin sips from his wine.

Predictably, but no less charming in her nobility- _charming?_ -the Inquisitor leans forward and asks whether the real Comte has been killed. The assassin shakes his head.

"We felt the courtesy of an explanation was in order," he says. Josephine feels gratitude at the strict business ethics that guide Orlais, even the House of Repose, and she can feel the Inquisitor's disbelieving gaze as she thanks him. All the excitement from her brief play in the Game has left, and now she leans back in exhaustion. She has always hated the bloodshed of the Game, and has always refused, ever since one night in Orlais, to participate in the violence.

When he stands to leave, she nervously watches as the Inquisitor halts him. The man has done nothing wrong; he has helped. Josephine tries to convey this with her eyes.

Lady Lavellan looks back to her and hesitates, a helpless frustration in her face, a sort of darkness Josephine has only seen once, before pausing and allowing the man to leave. There is a harsh anger in her voice as she says, "Go, then," and it startles Josephine. She has never heard the Inquisitor angry before—frustrated, yes, but never  _angry_.

Lady Lavellan is angry on her behalf. Lady Lavellan is confused, and afraid…on her behalf. There is no other explanation for her anger.

 _It means nothing_ , she tells herself. Josephine tells herself a lot of things.  _Merely concern for her advisor._   _She is not a knight and I am not a damsel. I have the answer. I can rescue myself. Be angry for myself. I know I can do it…I just need to survive until then_.

Her trade had once been secrets and whispered songs. She can summon those skills again, if she needs to.

And a strange calm falls over her as she stands, looking at the woman in front of her, looking at the haunting grace of the elf's features—a strange calm because somehow, Josephine knows she will survive. With Lady Lavellan's support, she thinks. Even with assassins hunting her. Josephine doesn't know if it's foolishness or a memory of starlight, or a frozen image in her mind's eye of the sun in the mountains and laughter and beauty, or if it's the truth, but either way, she finds herself not caring.

Then a muffled knocking interrupts her dream-like state, and she rushes to a closet in the corner where the real Comte has been trapped.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are continuing along the lines of "Of Somewhat Fallen Fortune." There are spoilers, as before. The latter half of this is loosely based off a scene I can only half-remember that isn't often mentioned, but it seems like a scene that could have had a lot done with it. So, enjoy :) things are going to get a bit experimental in this chapter.

Leliana is angry, and for some reason the Inquisitor is giving her a hardened look. Everyone seems angry, except for Josephine herself, who has been suffused with a sort of manic determination. Her plan must work. It will.

"If my assassins infiltrate and destroy the original," Leliana says, leaning on her desk, "the assassins will have no obligation to chase you." She presses the point rather harshly, but Josephine knows it comes from a place of sisterly concern. Still, though, there is a sort of restless anger that seems out of the ordinary.

"Leliana, please. I want no more bloodshed over a personal affair." Josephine worries she's starting to crack around the edges. The manic feeling wells up in her throat, and it seems to pour out in her voice as she pleads with Leliana.

Josephine cannot allow more bloodshed. She caused the death of one innocent in her life, and the lives her couriers, and perhaps more in her diplomatic operations. That is too much already, and the thought of more people dying for her sake makes her stomach clench.

Red. She had once rather liked the color; it was not the most expensive of dyes, but it was passionate. Romantic. She would sing about it, sometimes, before flitting off to broker secrets in the night.

Now, though, it coated a dagger. The mask before her fell away. A body fell. Her heart fell, seeing the face underneath. She would never quite be able to pick it back up.

The color did not seem to leave her hands after that night.

No, not again. Not anymore. She has left that life behind. She brokers peace and non-violent solutions.

Niceness before knives.

The phrase is as much for her as it is for Leliana, in truth.

"Don't be so stubborn, Josie!"

She closes her eyes a moment and sees red. She feels it in her veins, pulsing, whirring. The red is everywhere. It has stained her. It is inside her, a part of her, no matter how much niceness she puts between herself and that memory. If she opens her eyes, if she looks, she's sure it will still be there on her hands, her clothes, even so many years later-

"We can solve this without deaths on either side," the Inquisitor says. Josephine opens her eyes to look at her, needs—wants, Josephine wants so much—that placid gaze to wash away the memories, but the Inquisitor is looking at Leliana with a peculiar expression. It is calm, on the surface, but beneath is a darkness Josephine has come to realize is distress.

It confuses Josephine, who would have thought the Inquisitor would side with Leliana, since she seems to have no lost love for the House of Repose or its members. She feels oddly caught in the middle of something, but she can't quite get her mind to work at its usual pace. Instead her mind is caught in an endless loop of redness and guilt and constant memos, drafting plans for the rise of the Du Paraquettes.

With a look Josephine usually associates with some sort of murder-y plot, Leliana straightens. She gazes at Josephine, assessing, almost, and protective, too. And murder-y.

Finalizing plans for Josephine's protection, Leliana crosses her arms and glares at the Inquisitor in a way that Josephine finds most disrespectful before making her way out of the room.

Shaking the confusion out of her head, Josephine turns back to Lady Lavellan, who has the expression of someone who has just smelled sour milk. Josephine feels that an entire separate conversation had occurred that she was completely oblivious to.

"First, we need to perform some favors in Val Royeaux," Josephine says to fill the angry silence left by their Spymaster. The Inquisitor's face suddenly transforms into one of concentrated interest. "I'd be happy to discuss where we could begin," Josephine continues hurriedly, then flushes and buries her face in memos.

Where had that come from? Where we could begin, as if the Inquisitor is somehow a…partner of some sort? As if she has any monopoly on the Inquisitor's time? And…was that a note of flirting?

Maker, Josephine forgot how bad she is at flirting since she last tried. She is not a knight here to rescue me, she reminds herself. But the other woman certainly looks the part, bathed once again in sunset hues that seem to suit her features so well, the shadows highlighting the dramatic arch of her cheekbones, the reds of the fire casting an energy over the pale features that Josephine can almost pretend is a blush. A mingled feeling of awe, terror, and…something else, something not quite a school girl crush fills the place where her heart used to be, where it had fallen to the ground years before. Not a school girl crush, no, Josephine tells herself—because that school girl no longer exists. That school girl had been murdered the same night as that boy, by her own hand.

Josephine focuses back on the hasty notes she's made to herself. Musings on her own failures can wait. Her plan is an admittedly abstruse method to solving the problem. And why had the Inquisitor acceded to Josephine's wishes? If there's one thing Lady Montilyet understands about the Inquisitor, it is that she rushes into battle head first, quickly and efficiently protecting those closest to her. Why follow such a long plan? Why anger Leliana (who did seem to be overreacting, really, which is another oddity in itself)? The two usually get on so well, Josephine thinks. After assisting Leliana in personal matters, the Inquisitor could be seen laughing with Leliana— who laughs too, laughing, and Maker knows that's rare these days for the Spymaster.

Niceness before knives has become Leliana's motto, too. And what a strange one it is, but suitable, for there is a light in her eyes that even the hood cannot quell these days.

Why threaten such a bond? Indeed, why even disagree with Leliana, who for all intents in purposes is right, except for Josephine's own insistence on a bloodless intervention?

The Inquisitor requests the details for Josephine's plan, and she gives them hastily before returning to reports. She can feel those eyes examining her, asking a question but she isn't sure what it is. Not yet, though something in the back of her mind whispers the answer.

First, though, she must survive.

And, really, it all means nothing. Realistically.

Josephine is not quite sure what to call this newest side to the Inquisitor.

"Really," Josephine says shakily, staring at the corpse on the floor of her office. "I am quite alright. Leliana's agents seem to have been effective in stopping the assassin."

There is a dark, pinched expression on the elf's face, standing just across from her but looking, somehow, very distant, as if her mind as wandered to some sort of alternate world, a world that causes her fear and grief. It is the same look she had when returning with Dorian from the alternate timeline. Josephine does not know what to make of the expression. It means nothing. She feels oddly calm. She was right; she is protected in the walls of Skyhold. Leliana, for all her anger and sharpness, has managed to secure her safety. And the Inquisitor would soon secure it for good.

But still, standing between two of their agents, she can't put a name to the expression. It is inscrutable—the Inquisitor keeps whatever it is checked just behind her eyes, just out of reach, shuttered behind a truth she does not want to accept. Josephine recognizes the look from on top of the mountain.

They stand silently as the agents melt away with the body. The Inquisitor has not moved an inch.

"Your Worship?" Josephine murmurs. For some odd reason, her pulse thrums in her throat expectantly.

"I…" The words catch in the Inquisitor's throat. Suddenly the shutter lifts and Josephine feels like the wind has been knocked out of her, for there is a gentleness and a fear and a warmth she never could have expected. "Lady Montilyet…" And Lady Lavellan steps forward, hesitantly, and Josephine feels herself step forward too, still transfixed by the sudden transformation, held breathless in a moment of wanting that has overcome her mind. Her vision focuses in until all she sees is the handsome face, the hauntingly beautiful eyes, the arch of her ears.

In two steps, the elf has closed the gap between them, and she is so close, closer than she has ever been, and she smells, inconceivably, like forest and wood and Josephine wonders if there are even that many trees, really, out here in the cold impenetrability of the mountains, the alpine wastes where now, it seems, yes, anything is possible. Even forests and wood smell.

Relief, Josephine realizes, as the Inquisitor hesitates, then seems to make a decision and folds Josephine in a tight hug. She is relieved.

It is fear, reconciled, like a child waking from a nightmare. It is a relief that fills Josephine with warmth as she stands still, stunned, and the other woman nearly pulls away before Josephine lifts her arms too and closes them around the Inquisitor. She is deceptively strong, a lean solidness running through her warrior's frame, and oh, it is like sunlight itself melting the snow on the mountain caps, like the grass in the courtyard, like the flowers opening themselves to the warmth. Josephine feels the light down to her toes and to her fingertips and she feels, if she tries, she might be able to do magic, right there, and wouldn't that be something?

So they embrace, bizarrely, she thinks, standing next to a slight stain on the floor. The red should frighten her. It should make her tremble—my hands, my hands, are they clean? But she finds herself trembling for an entirely different reason, and it is bittersweet and cold and warm, all throughout her red, red veins. Her head fits right into the crook of her collarbone and for the first time, perhaps, since the affair with the Wardens, Josephine relaxes. She feels the warm form pressed against her inhale and exhale slowly, hesitantly, as if counting the beats and Josephine almost swears she can feel the thrum of the other woman's blood.

And suddenly it strikes her how inappropriate this is, that this is not something that would be done in Orlais unless one were courting the other, and she trembles. Josephine is embracing the hero of Thedas. The Inquisitor, the Herald. In her arms, Lady Lavellan is both legend and woman, and the thought thrills her. She is embracing her, this noble, kind, sweet woman as, in Orlais, one might a…a suitor.

However, she thinks, with a cold feeling of despair—however, this is not a story of chevaliers. This is not Orlais, and the woman embracing her has not offered any indication of something more. Lady Lavellan is most likely just concerned for Josephine as her advisor and, in some way, a friend.

Josephine tells herself a lot of things, she knows, but this thing is safe. This thought is safe because Josephine knows she's in trouble. This is no school girl crush; this is something else she can't, doesn't want to dare speak the name of. She tenses and the Inquisitor notices, drawing back, the shutters collapsing over her eyes. Almost awkwardly, the elf shifts her long arms around, crossing and uncrossing them, placing them to her sides, fidgeting with the hem of her tunic. Josephine flees to her desk—placing something, anything, in between her and that forest of feelings—as the Inquisitor agents filter back in with her servant, who is carrying a bucket and a washcloth.

But Josephine knows better, watching the Inquisitor make her way to the War Room for the final piece of their game. Josephine knows the red will never come out.

It will hunt her even after the assassins have stopped.


	8. Chapter 8

The water is calm and soothing, but Josephine doesn't feel the same thrill and excitement she once did standing at this port and watching the boats and ships. She finds herself longing for the mountains, for their cold, distant beauty—constant, stable, unchanging, only to riotously avalanche on unwelcome intruders. The lapping of the port waters seems placid and predictable in comparison. She longs for the piercing wistfulness of the peaks that so very nearly echo the dramatic cheekbones of a certain elf.

A certain elf, who is also hero, legend, warrior. Friend.

 _Friend_.

She thinks of that strong frame, holding her in desperate relief. She thinks of what it was like to be so close to her, to feel the heartbeats drumming a nervous rhythm into her ear. She feels, suddenly, very warm under the sun and a curling elation folds itself around her heart and something less…less school-girlish hums through her abdomen. It makes her a nervous sort of sick, and she bows her head against the light.

She does not want to put a name to it, the burning in her stomach, the flutter in her chest. The heady feeling.

 _Friend_.

Stupidly noble, caring, brave…

But not a  _chevalier_ , Josephine reminds herself. And she herself is no damsel. Not after the things she's done.

It is over. Finally. But as she gazes down at her locked hands, she still sees red, even if the bright afternoon sunlight. Even though she, and the Inquisitor, kept blood out of it, she sees past and future lives staining her hands. Time compresses on her, the past and future blurring together in this solitary moment, shaped entirely by red.

She does not like death, or dying. She does not like murder. She knows that it is a necessity for the Inquisitor, but having to sanction it chokes Josephine. And she sees, sometimes, a fleeting glimpse of red remorse in Lady Lavellan's eyes, too, reads it in the reports that come across her desk. She knows that the Inquisitor may enjoy the challenge of a fight, subduing those trying to kill her, but does not enjoy its inevitable end, when her enemies must submit. She sees her spare even the vilest person when she judges their fates.

Perhaps, Josephine thinks, she should speak with the Inquisitor. Perhaps the Inquisitor might even understand. As a friend, of course. This heaviness in her heart won't lift under her strength alone. Josephine is not a warrior.

Footsteps make her tense. She knows she should feel safe, but she is hyperaware of her unprotected back. Her hands twitch and she clenches them, reminding herself the threat is over. The footsteps have a familiar cadence, though they sound a bit different in the echoing passageway of buildings and water.

The heaviness in her hearts lifts, just a bit, and she begins speaking without needing to see who it is.

"I received a letter from the House of Repose, Your Worship," Josephine says. She delays the moment a bit, tasting the sweet anticipation in her mouth, before finally allowing herself to look at that handsome face. She takes in the pleasant angles, the strong jawline, the quiet nobility. After a moment, the sunlight—she tells herself it's the sunlight—suddenly pierces her eyes and she turns away again, blinking away a burning feeling. "They acknowledge the contract is null and void. There's no longer a price on my life." Even as she says it, though, she doesn't feel free, and her body curls in on itself a little, protectively. She will always be hunted by memories, by a young face stricken in terror and shock.

The Inquisitor pauses a moment and she can feel the calm eyes on her. "I'm glad you won't have to live your life looking over your shoulder anymore," she says finally, earnestly, wanting to believe the long game had been worth the extra risk. Josephine remembers a hug and the scent of forests, and she can't bring herself to look at the other woman quite yet, afraid of she would reveal a forest of her own growing right in the roots of her heavy heart.

She remembers, too, the Inquisitor facing the assassin. She remembers violence brewing just beneath the surface, and the Inquisitor's ready acceptance to intervene on her behalf. She remembers the Inquisitor's desperate face at Josephine's near-assassination, the trembling metronome of her heartbeat afterwards.

"I regret we were forced to deal with them."  _My fault—my family, my stupid games. My na_ _ï_ _ve refusal to taint my hands_. "That you were endangered by my part in the game." Josephine looks out across the port to the monumental statue of a warrior woman, sword held to her side. She feels small and fragile in comparison, like dust. Like leaves in the forest, blown away at the first hint of a storm.

She feels small and fragile in the weight of all her pasts and futures weighing down on her, in this moment. The Inquisitor is silent but moves next to her, and she seems to understand that there are words unsaid just beneath Josephine's hesitation.

"Did I ever mention I used to be a bard?" The question falls quickly, heavily, out of her mouth, like bricks, and she feels foolish. But now they are free and the rest of the weight comes falling after them.

The Inquisitor straightens next to her in surprise. "You were a singer?"

The innocence in the question makes her want to laugh and weep at once, and Josephine can't stop it anymore, and finally turns to the other woman,  _wanting_ , wanting something, but she can't figure out what it is and so she fills the void with words. Words are safe. Words delay action, and Josephine doesn't know what she would do if she let herself  _act_  right now, except that it would be very foolish and very desperate and very sad.

"Bards entertain the Orlesian courts. They—"  _I_  – "sing, play music, make charming conversation…and spy."

"What made you interested in becoming a bard?" the other woman asks, and Josephine feels her mouth twitch a little in reflex. The predictability of the question is comforting, as is Lady Lavellan's predicted interest in her background.

And Josephine tells her, also predictably, without hesitation. She tells her about her days in the university with her friends, she tells her about her silly, naïve romance tales (she leaves out the  _chevalier_ stories though—that would be utterly revealing). She tells her that she never feared the violence, implies she never really expected to have red stain her hands after managing the secrets of important nobles.

Lady Josephine Montilyet doesn't tell her everything, either. She thinks it's for the best, now. There is only so much weight she can give up. Some of it she's grown used to. Some of it anchors her. But the rest—she needs to give some sort of explanation for the convoluted plan, for her insistence on a bloodless intervention.

She feels an ironic smile overcome her as she talks, remembering those youthful days, the pageantry of the courts in Orlais. She wonders, briefly, what it would have been like with the Inquisitor by her side.

Silly thought, of course. An elf in an Orlesian court had only a few roles, and none of them pleasant.

"You seem a bit…steady for such an outgoing lifestyle."

Josephine can't stop the laugh that erupts out of her because the Inquisitor is too right. "The life of an entertainer didn't suit me at all." An understatement, really; Josephine's best weapon is her words, and she can play the diplomat, but she found she didn't take well to being another person's amusement. Another person's toy.

The sun dips low behind distant hills, and she crosses her arm against the chill. As if sensing the weight of the rest of the story, the Inquisitor leans a hand on the railing, and it puts her distractingly close to Josephine who is, after all, trying to delicately purge her demons and really, the least the Inquisitor could do would be to not look at her like that, with that concerned, interested face, those eyes that make the roots of her heart tremble—

Josephine realizes she should get on with it, and she sighs a little before continuing. "During one particular intrigue, I encountered a bard sent to kill my patron." The words come easily, now, thoughtlessly. She sees the memory in her mind's eye, and suddenly she is there, outside that door in the dark night—

_It was a bit suffocating in the small alcove she'd hidden in. She'd heard the footsteps and launched herself into the shadows. She wasn't much of a fighter, but she was good at sticking to darkness, hiding in it, waiting and listening. Usually for secrets. Not tonight, though; this wasn't a stroll of her patron's guests through the halls. They'd retired long ago after she'd entertained them with a few tales she'd picked up from another court, a song just shy of being indecent. She'd felt a bit sick as they clapped for her, a couple of the men reaching for her and laughing as she'd danced just out of reach._

_Then, once they retired, she'd taken her nightly stroll in the perimeter of darkness to see if she could catch the guests' private conversation from outside their door. The footsteps had halted her, though. They were hurried, scuffing lightly on the ground before lifting away, as if trying not to make too much noise. But their owner wasn't experienced enough to really avoid it._

_Trying to focus her eyes in the utter darkness, Josephine managed to see a hooded figure peer around the corner and dart forward, a bit clumsily. Her heart leapt to her throat._

_Only one type of person would act like that, obviously. Her patron hadn't been targeted yet, being one of the less wealthy members of the Orlesian courts, so she wanted to believe it wouldn't happen._

_But it was, now._

_And her silent musings had wasted time, and she noticed the figure had just stumbled a bit clumsily past her, looking about for the right room, hearing the guests murmuring inside their own chambers, and then Josephine had darted out without thinking._

"We fought." She thinks back to that night—

_Her hands fought for purchase on the overly fine silk uniform of the other bard, his ornate mask slipping slightly. Hers felt a bit claustrophobic, too._

-"Or perhaps 'scrapped' is the better word. Both of us terrified."

_Their gasps and scared heaves were the only sound aside from the frantic rustling. It became very clear very fast that neither of them had really done this before._

"We were at the top of a steep flight of stairs."

_They rolled slightly, Josephine clawing to stay on top but failing, her back hitting the floor hard enough to leave her gasping. She felt an empty gap of air next to her, yawning, waiting._

She's looking at the Inquisitor, wishing she could stop the words, regretting the whole thing now, but she can't. She wonders if the Inquisitor will think differently of her after hearing them. They feel like poison in her chest. Dead weight. Her voice grows unsteady. "The other bard drew a knife. And I pushed him away from me…"

_A sudden flash of steel caught her eye. She panicked—she wasn't ready to die. This was just supposed to be good fun. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. She needed to finish her course at university, she needed to go home and manage her family's failing fortunes, she needed…she wanted…_

_Without thinking, a reflex, really, she got a good hold on the slippery fabric, shifted her weight just the right way, and shoved him into the empty, hungry space next to them, and he tumbled away. Vanished, like leaves in the wind. Josephine realized, in that moment, in the breath it took to grab him and push, that she did have a fighter in her. Somewhere. That she could kill when she needed to._

She looks away from the Inquisitor, feeling choked, feeling cold despite the midday sun. "You can imagine the result."

_And her patron's guests had finally noticed the commotion and come stumbling out, to find her at the bottom of the stairs, weeping great, wracking heaves over a bloody body._

The Inquisitor's voice startles her out of the memory. "It wasn't your fault," she says, intently. "You were defending yourself."

Josephine feels herself, finally, unleash the anguish inside of her. "But it was such a  _waste_ , Inquisitor!" She wants to believe the death was justified, but she can't. He was so young… "When I took off his mask—"

_They'd seen the mask lying next to her, her hands bloodied as she tried to stop the bleeding. A young man's face was discernible through the thick redness._

"—I  _knew_  him. We'd attended parties together."

_She'd been fond of him, the way a school girl was fond of someone she went to parties with, someone who flirted harmlessly with her and offered hesitant flatterings._

She looks away again, becoming more and more agitated with herself, with her foolishness. "If I'd stopped to reason, if I'd used my voice instead of scuffling like a common thug…I'll always wonder who that young man would have grown into."

Josephine doesn't want to look at the other woman, doesn't want to see disgust or, perhaps even worse, pity, at her pathetic attempts at adventure that had merely gotten a young man killed.

"He tried to kill you," the Inquisitor says, and it is a final judgment as if from the throne, and her voice is sharp, sharper than usual. It startles Josephine into looking at her. There is no pity there, no remorse, no disgust. But there's an angry hardness there that reminds her of the look she'd seen when the Inquisitor confronted the assassin.

It is an anger on her behalf.

The thought drives away the dark memories, sheds a bright light on them that sends them shirking back to the shadows. Instead, a warm feeling erupts inside of her, and she feels a sudden, inexplicable gratefulness wash over her. It is somewhere between giddiness and wistfulness and it's almost painful, but it's the sweetest pain she's ever felt.

And she  _wants_ …oh, she wants…just what, though, she can't tell herself. Not yet.

"In all the commotion…" she starts, unable to look away from the other woman, and she needs to steady herself with both hands on the railing. She clears her throat. "…Forgive me. I don't believe I ever thanked you for helping me with…this." It seems poor repayment, and she feels a bit embarrassed that this is all she can offer, a stumbling, school girl's thanks.

And then something happens, there, by the seaside. Something happens she hasn't seen since the balcony, or since the arrival of the Grey Wardens. It's a mischief that lights up the Inquisitor's eyes, tilts the corners of her mouth. The Inquisitor leans forward a bit in a half-bow, the bright sunlight illuminating her features in a way that makes Josephine's breath catch, suddenly. And she's reminded of starlight, of the smell of wood, of the impossible becoming possible.

"I'd do it again in a heartbeat," Lady Lavellan says lowly, her chainmail glinting in a way that dazzles her. "Such a gracious woman deserves nothing else."

Josephine feels her face erupt in fire despite the cool breeze of the port, and she tries to explain it away, to remind herself that the Inquisitor really is rather terrible at flirting— _gracious_ , really?—but it doesn't work because all she sees are those mischievous eyes, twinkling.

And Josephine smiles, really, for the first time in days, and the Inquisitor seems pleased at that, straightens up, and maybe, though the thought is insane, that was her goal.

"I…" Lady Montilyet finds herself speechless, a habit she seems to get into around this woman, and the warm feeling has spread throughout her abdomen, and she feels very hot, and very giddy, and very embarrassed and uncertain, and she wants to retreat into shadows but there are none here. No desk to flee behind, either. Just the calm, predictable water and one very unpredictable Inquisitor. "Such talk. I'm quite overcome." Well, that's one word for it, anyway, and Josephine's too afraid to put any others to the flaming forest inside her.

"Should I stop?"

The question startles her because suddenly, now, it's not just mischief, it's something else, something the Inquisitor is afraid of doing, and Josephine feels that yawning, hungry, empty space again, like she is about to go tumbling down the stairs.

"Oh, no!" She wishes the Inquisitor could say things like that to her all day, but it is inappropriate, and most likely harmless, and she is really rather confused. She realizes she shouldn't' sound so eager. "I mean, yes!" Maker, that's not what she meant either. "I meant…no. I…I don't…"

The amusement has entered the other woman's face again and Josephine can't help but laugh at herself, too, and laugh to try to get that flaming feeling out, before it burns her from the inside out, and all the leaves will have burned before the forest even grows.

"Well, if you meant to draw a blush to my cheeks, you've  _completely_  succeeded," Josephine says, hoping self-deprecation will help alleviate the intensity happening inside her. "Let's return to Skyhold before anyone notices." An intensity the Inquisitor seems unaffected by, watching her with a calm, but interested, amusement, and Josephine's not sure what's lurking beneath that, not sure if she's ready to know.

And they have an entire journey ahead of them for Josephine to find out, and the thought is both frightening and exhilarating.

They move away from the boats, and the red feels like a distant nightmare, now, a weightless dream drifting away on a gentle current.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following chapter is off-canon and inspired by two things: 1) the way travel worked in Dragon Age: Origins (and my assumption that "fast travel" in DA:I doesn't mean some sort of magical teleportation), and 2) a scene out of Xena.

Josephine never quite forgets the Inquisitor is a warrior, but the idea and the reality are two very different things. The chainmail blinks as the sun peers around a cloud, and she squints her eyes against it.

_"Let's go back to Skyhold before anyone notices."_

Josephine has journeyed from Skyhold to Orlais and back a number of times for various diplomatic purposes, but never with the Inquisitor. She'd ridden out to Orlais with a small band of Inquisition agents—Leliana's, of course, protecting her as always—and they're making the trek back with Lady Lavellan, Sera, the Iron Bull, and Dorian. Really, she's not sure why she invited herself along, except that it seemed right to be on this path together. Except, of course, that the Inquisitor had moved ahead with the others.

Around them, the air begins to bite a bit, the wind picking up as the hills slowly and ominously grow steeper. She adjusts a blanket over herself and tries to ignore the rattle in her skull. Honestly, she thinks, there must be a better way to build carts than this.

But she sighs a bit ruefully, watching the Inquisitor exchange surprisingly ribald barbs with her companions ahead (Josephine did not need nor want to know about Dorian and Iron Bull's…more acrobatic activities). She's done this to herself, after all. After the long journey between Haven and Skyhold, she simply can't bring herself to sit horseback for so long.

There is another reason too, one she doesn't really want to admit to herself because it betrays a lowness and vanity she would rather not acknowledge. Still, she muses, hearing a bell-like laughter emerge from a certain woman in front of her, she thinks she ought to stop telling herself so many diplomatic fibs.

Josephine wanted to wear her usual clothes. Josephine thinks they rather flatter her and such things matter in Orlais (she does not let herself consider that, somewhere, her heart hopes a particular set of blue eyes might notice). Josephine, also, cannot wear her dress and ride a horse unless she rides side saddle, which is horridly uncomfortable for long distances.

And so, Josephine wore the purple and gold (expensive dyes, of course), and settled herself onto the cart.

And so, Josephine is enormously uncomfortable. She tries to focus on the sense of home that returns to her as they round a bend, the dramatic mountains suddenly swallowing the horizon whole. For the first time, she feels relief leaving Orlais, leaving with it redness and weight and pain and moving now, instead, to the cool white blankness of her new and unpredictable life. Tall shadows fall over them as they move into the foothills, and Josephine allows herself to soak in the clean air, free from the stench of city life.

The wagoneer clicks his tongue at the horses and they speed up a bit. She grits her teeth, hoping she might keep them from coming loose and shaking around in her ears. Unpredictable indeed. Suddenly, there is a break in the noise ahead and, for some reason, a chill that has nothing to do with their altitude pricks its way along her skin.

Everyone freezes, and she barely catches herself on the edge of her seat. Ahead, the Inquisitor half stands in her stirrups.

"Uh oh," the man next her murmurs. "Don't like the looks of that."

"Pardon?" Josephine says, but she has a feeling. A bad one.

"Well, what with the civil war and all…there haven't been as many patrols out this way from Orlais, keeping the riff raff and whatnot away. And it's not close enough to Skyhold for Inquisition forces." He hops down, holding the reigns, and waits. Josephine feels disbelief and hot, hot anger welling up inside, darkening the edges of her vision, or maybe that was fear, or panic. She tries to breathe, and the encroaching redness halts. "Looks like the Inquisitor saw something."

"How could this happen?" she says finally, faintly. "The Empress—surely she would have said they were no longer patrolling this area. Surely they would have alerted us."

The wagoneer doesn't look at her, his eyes focused forward, and Josephine notices, suddenly, the glint of steel in his hand. Maker, this can't be happening. Her chest constricts and she feels the weight again, feels like she's back in that hallway, waiting for an attack she knows will, must, come, but unable to do anything to stop it.

"Don't know, Lady Ambassador. It's possible a fight broke out nearby and she needed 'em right away."

Suddenly Sera is there, her face lit with a manic glee that frightens Josephine as much as the too-quiet air and then there are shapes materializing in front of them. The world slows and she sees the Inquisitor pull her sword free and it is a fluid, graceful moment, like water, like the sigh of a breeze.

Josephine will never forget that image, and it joins a precious collection—a slim elf standing against an archdemon of nightmares, the Inquisitor's face lit by the low sun in the afternoon, mischievous eyes dancing in starlight, the Inquisitor holding a sword in the air as they all cheer-

And violence erupts around them, and Sera has grabbed her, pulling her off the cart. "This way, Ruffles. Wait, sorry. Lady Ruffles; where're my manners?" She drags her to the side and in the noise and the confusion, Josephine barely registers what's happening. "Come on, the Inquisitor would be right steaming if you got hurt. Says to get you somewhere safe. But I ain't sittin' this one out, so you gotta stay here, right? Me, a baby-sitter. Not bloody likely." Then Sera's gone, reappearing some distance away with a fierce uppercut stroke to some bandit's face. Josephine distantly decides that's what they are, men in patchy armor scavenged from Maker knows where. She realizes, too, that she's automatically blended into the shadows against some rocks, but it's hard to see around the red and black creeping in over her eyes, staining everything she looks at.

"Inquisitor!" The yell is Sera's, and she's shaken back to herself, her vision clearing with alarming sharpness so that her eyes water a bit against the bright white of the distant mountains.

It's like waking up from one nightmare and entering another, the horrible memories fading into the present. Her heart begins to pound and pound a metronome rhythm from only days ago ( _the Inquisitor holding her, frantic, desperate_ ) and she looks for the Inquisitor but there are so many bodies fighting and falling, and Iron Bull suddenly charges right past her, nearly knocking her into the rocks as he barrels over five bandits at a time with an ecstatic roar.

Then she sees her, not far from Josephine, and her world narrows to a single pinpoint. The elf knocks over a bandit with her shield, a harsh cry issuing forth as she slashes down at him and there is red, red, red. Lady Lavellan turns and sees one cut at Dorian from behind, and he stumbles and falls and she yells, "Dorian!" Sera shoots an arrow into the back of the bandit's head, just under the line of his helm, and he vanishes into the red in the edges of her vision.

Josephine's breath catches.

A hulking man has appeared behind the Inquisitor ("Die, Knife-ears!") while she was distracted, and she spins to meet the swing of his axe but it is too little too late. It grinds against the steel, rotating the edge slightly, but the force is too strong and the flat side hits the side of the elf's head, and her body flies like a doll, dressed all in red. She hits the ground and he lifts the axe again, Sera yelling and Bull trying to charge but he's too late, too slow, too slow, too slow—

Suddenly Josephine has a dagger in her hand (vaguely she remembers grabbing it from the hand of a dead bandit but it doesn't feel like her, or her hand, it just feels sharp and red), and she is behind the huge man, somehow; she can't remember and she's not sure if this is real, but the old instinct that knew just how to throw a young boy down the steps awakens, real or not. She leaps forward and the next thing she knows there is red everywhere, and she's on the ground, and Sera is yelling—"I told you to stay put! What the bloody hell was that? Since when was Ruffles some kinda assassin?!"-and huge hands have pulled her to the side—"Come on, killer; only a few more to go, leave them to us."

There isn't enough air in the world. Josephine's not sure there will be, ever, and no matter how hard she breathes she just can't get it into her lungs. She's kneeling on the grass, she realizes, and her hands are so very red, and then something stirs near her and suddenly the red doesn't matter. Gasping, feeling like she weighs too much, that maybe she's a mountain or forest or even grass with deep deep roots, she crawls forward. A face swims into view, and she has to blink a few times before it turns into someone she recognizes. And that face is achingly handsome, even bruised and red as it is, and it is so pale, underneath all the blood. She inhales hard, wondering when the air will enter her lungs again, and thinking maybe it only will if those eyes open.

Then they do, and she is so, so wrong, because she stops breathing altogether.

A sound, and Josephine leans forward shakily, her hands trembling as she places them next to that face, those cheekbones, eyes full of starlight and fire and something else, something with deep deep roots.

The Inquisitor's mouth barely moves. "Josephine." A whisper, like a promise. On the Inquisitor's lips her name is a prayer—a sacred name rarely, if ever, uttered. Josephine's frozen for a long moment before she moves her hand slowly to do what, she's not sure, but she  _wants_.

Before she can do anything, though, more hands have pushed her aside, their owners muttering something about reviving the Inquisitor and potions and injury kits, but she is numb and nothing quite makes sense anymore. She tries to fight the hands away, needing to stay next to the prone figure on the ground, but there's no air in her lungs and she can't fight without air, so she struggles only faintly.

The next thing she's aware of is Sera kneeling in front of her, waving a speckled hand in front of her face. "Ruffles? Anyone in there? Warrior haze left you yet?" The sight of blood makes her chest constrict, and she can only cough a little. She has no idea how much time has passed; the moments seem to have come undone around her. "The Inquisitor's all patched up. You can stop acting like she died. Happens all the time, you know. She's always throwing herself in front of some arsehole or another. I mean, there's normally not so much blood and all, and she did go flying pretty far, but—"

The reality of the Inquisitor being a warrior had never truly hit Josephine, and she feels the world tilt woozily.

"But I've got a pretty hard head," a familiar voice says, and Josephine looks up into the yellowing light of the early evening. A figure stands outlined against the light, and then a familiar set of eyes are now level with her. Sera has vanished, and Josephine suddenly worries she's been staring for a long time. She can't tell how long. Everything is fuzzy, slightly indistinct except for the woman in front of her.

And those eyes. There is something deep in them, a dark sea roiling underneath the calm, or the canopy of a forest, extending up, up and shadowing everything it touches.

Josephine inhales and time rights itself. It is evening. They are on the way to Skyhold from Orlais. Bandits attacked, and she—she—well, they are safe, now. There is red everywhere. She is tired.

"Forgive me, Your Worship," she says, beginning to stand. A hand appears in front of her, and she stares at it a moment, at the delicacy of the fingers contrasted with the wide calluses of a strong palm. Without thinking, she places her hand in it, and she finds herself gracefully and easily lifted to her feet.

 _She is not a_ chevalier, she chants to herself in her head, wondering why the stupid, insistent daydream won't leave her alone.

They stand for a moment and she feels a pressure squeeze her hand, and she starts, realizing they have not let go of one another, and she pulls back. Heat travels from her face, along her spine, settling in her lower abdomen, and shame overcomes her for feeling this way after what happened, after she—

"Lady Montilyet," the Inquisitor begins, and the name is weighty, and it seems wrong, now, after all this.

Without thinking, she interrupts her: "Josephine." She cannot stand anymore weight. She has left it behind, and she doesn't want it haunting her back to the safe, white spaces of the mountains.

There is a heavy silence and a deep, roiling sea in the other woman's eyes, suffused with gold from the lowering sun. "Josephine," the other woman murmurs, and Josephine feels the breath catch in her throat and inexplicably, her eyes burn, and she blinks the feeling away. "Josephine." And the sound is sacred to Josephine, something she can cling to that night when surely the nightmares will follow. "Thank you." The Inquisitor moves her arm as if to reach out, but she jerkily presses it back to her side, her eyes tempestuous. "And I…apologize. We should have sent scouts out on either side. I shouldn't have assumed…I am so sorry, Lady—Josephine." Her face has turned pale and her eyes have drifted to the side.

Now Josephine moves, impertinently, unthinkingly grabbing the hand that had nearly reached out. She knows the guilt, the stupid, stupid nobility, that will be welling up within the other woman for putting her in such a position. Strangely, though, looking at that face, still lightly streaked with blood, Josephine feels the horror within her calm and the air return to her lungs. If she has nightmares, it will be of not getting there in time, of a much worse fate than a hurt head befalling the other woman.  _It happens all the time_ , Sera had said. The thought is not comforting.

So she takes that delicate but strong hand in hers, relishing the living warmth in it, and Lady Lavellan looks at her from under her lashes. Josephine has to resist touching the slightly trembling jaw because that would, of course, be wildly inappropriate. Most unbecoming of either an Ambassador or Inquisitor.

It is silent, and Josephine realizes the other woman is probably expecting her to say something. She tries to arrange the words in her mind, but finds them uncharacteristically tumbling out, as they so often do around this woman.

"I am not sorry," Josephine starts, and she sees the surprise in the other woman's face clear the shadows in the depths of her eyes. "I wish I could have used words instead, of course. But there was no time." Her hand clenches around the other's convulsively, thinking what might have happened. "And I will never be sorry for preserving your life or well-being, Inquisitor. I am merely relieved you were not more grievously injured."

A familiar gleam enters the Inquisitor's eye, dazzling in the low sunlight. "Well," she says slowly, her mouth lifting a little. Josephine tries not to think that she was so close to never seeing the expression again. "Well, I wasn't expecting you to be as brave as you are charming." And instead of making her blush, it makes Josephine nearly weep, because the terrible flirting feels comforting, now, familiar, and after all the red and horror it is like coming home to the mountains.

Then Josephine loses all ability to remain proper and to respect traditional conventions. She steps forward, ignoring the armor, the blood soaking under her boots, the blood soaking her hands— _her hands_ —and desperately wraps the Inquisitor in a hug. There is a moment, a pause just long enough to make Josephine begin to feel hot shame again, when mailed arms close around her in return.

A breath whispers past her ear, miraculously, a trembling little prayer: "Call me Ellana," the Inquisitor whispers, like a poem, a precious gift.

The name roots itself deep in Josephine's heart.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, folks, we've finally caught up to where I actually am in the writing process--from this point forward, I'll be updating 1-2 times a week. Sorry for having dumped so many chapters on you at once, but I wanted to be caught up with where this is cross-posted. I struggled a bit with this one, since dialogue isn't my forte and it's rather dialogue heavy (and none of it is canon dialogue). I almost cut it out and glossed it in the narrative instead, but I a) wanted to force myself out of my own comfort zone, and b) felt it was important. Small warning for some language that might veer a little into M territory, because Sera, but nothing terrible.

Josephine has noted from the first the Herald's ability to command love, devotion, and respect. In these moments, though, she realizes how essential that ability is to the Inquisition.

On the first half of the trip, Josephine had felt out of place, a—as Sera would say—"prissy" noble amongst a band of rogues, mages, warriors. In the second half, though, she finds herself the target of gentle jibes from the group. The Inquisitor and her companions have taken to trailing next to the cart. The quick thrusts and counterthrusts of the verbal sparring remind her of a more ribald version of the Game, and she finds herself enjoying it thoroughly, even if it is, well, horrifyingly inappropriate, to say the least.

"Look at her," Sera says. "Sitting there like she didn't just bring down the biggest arse this side of the sea. Surprised the tits right off me."

"Not the biggest," Dorian corrects her from the other side of the cart. "We are, after all, traveling with a Qunari warrior."

"Hey, leave my arse out of this—" Iron Bull begins to grumble.

"Why would I want to leave such a masterful piece of art out of anything?"

"—And I didn't realize you had tits to surprise off, Beanpole," Iron Bull says to Sera as though Dorian hadn't just spoken, but no one misses the twinkle in his eye. Josephine chuckles demurely behind her hand and is rewarded with a faint grin from the Qunari warrior.

"Oi!" There's a brief pause as Sera scrunches her face up, trying to think of a witty retort, before the manic glee of the battle returns to her eyes. "Oi, Bull, next time we oughtta try that throwing thing we practiced, yeah? Lady Ruffles got her dress all dirty 'cause your big arse slows you down and I was too busy saving the prissy mage over there." A light noise of protest from Dorian. "If you'd've just tossed me, I could've had the big one by his sensitive bits in no time, and the Inquisitor wouldn't've gotten whacked about like a soggy sack of wheat."

Josephine finds the banter both entertaining and disconcerting. That they could speak so glibly of a near-death experience, that they could joke about escaping danger so narrowly—she wonders if this is what it's always like. She also, though she would never admit it and barely acknowledges it herself, can't help but bask a little at the indirect praise. She saved the Inquisitor and turned the tide of the battle. She might be their diplomat, but she would risk her life for the Inquisitor— _the Inquisition_ , she corrects herself—just as any of them would. This banter is their way of thanking her, she thinks, of acknowledging what she's done. And, perhaps, this might be an attempt to soothe away the horrors of battle, turning the memory into something light-hearted to ease away the nightmares.

"Thanks for the image, Sera," the Inquisitor says dryly, pulling up next to her. "And no throwing on the battlefield." A series of childish whines respond, and she shakes her head ruefully. Josephine, however, spots a fond little smile twitching at her lips. "The last time I saw you two practice that, it ended with Cassandra chasing you halfway around the hold and a pretty big lump on Sera's head."

Sera pouts for a second before chuckling. "Totally worth it. The look on her face when I came flyin' at her…Almost as good as that one time I rounded up all the chickens…" She, Dorian, and Iron Bull pull away from the cart, recounting the best pranks they've pulled on the unsuspecting and easily frustrated Seeker. Conveniently, Josephine notices, the three leave her and the Inquisitor (and the wagoneer) alone.

There is an unmistakable, and entirely understandable (perhaps she understands too well, Josephine thinks), fondness of the ragtag little group for their leader. Josephine thinks of the Inquisitor as a linchpin, holding the stubborn and difficult to tame threads of her companions together. And again, there, in her heart, a hesitant little forest of feelings, at once admiring and fond, terrified and awed. What would they have done if they'd lost her that day? What would they have done if they couldn't banter about...anatomy…and blood and guts? What would happen to all of those threads?

"I'm afraid your dress needs mending," the Inquisitor—Ellana—remarks suddenly, and Josephine starts. She realizes she's been staring, again, and the bright snow has imprinted a not unpleasant outline of the Inquisitor onto her eyes. Now that the haze of battle has begun to retreat from her mind, Josephine wonders if the strange, out-of-time sensation she'd experienced during the battle is just one that happens around this woman. Time becomes meaningless, at once too slow and too fast. She treasures these small, brief moments together, knowing they cannot last, but trying to make them last forever anyway.

"I have others," she says, a bit bashfully, feeling once again out of place on the rough road. She's certain Ellana doesn't worry about her other companions' states of dress. They hit a particularly large bump and she clenches her teeth.

"Sorry, Your Ladyship," the wagoneer mumbles out of the corner of her mouth. Josephine waves off his apology.

"Lady—ah," Ellana starts, then coughs slightly. She looks away from Josephine's gaze, her profile serious and stormy, as if struggling against some inner turmoil, then seems to make a decision. When she turns back, a familiar twinkle has entered her eye. It makes Josephine's skin prickle. "Lady Montilyet," the other woman continues with an exaggerated, horrible Orlesian accent, "would you care to join me on my valiant steed?"

Caught between wanting to laugh and blush, Josephine stares at her, a rhythm pounding in her ears. The outstretched hand plays tricks on time; it is an image out of the tiny, hopeful childhood lingering in the back of her mind.

Uncertainty makes Ellana's face fall and her eyes dart to the side, as if seeking some sort of stoic wisdom only the mountains could provide. "I…well, your dress is already torn, and the cart is…" she trails off, afraid to offend the wagoneer. "…The cart is not typical transport for respected ambassadors. Especially not ones who moonlight as brave rogues," she finishes, flashing a seemingly mischievous smile heavy with questions.  _Should I stop_? the smile seems to ask.  _Should I stop?_

Without thinking, Josephine places her hand in the Inquisitor's. "Neither is a noble warrior's steed, but such scandal will certainly make for an entertaining story, no?" she replies, hoping the other woman doesn't hear the trembling forest of meanings and feelings just under the words.

She sees the flash of a smile and maybe the reddening of the tips of delicate ears but maybe that's the lowering sun, too, and then the world spins a moment and she is sitting behind the Inquisitor. The world stops in a red moment, this time not splayed with blood or agony but with a blushing touch of the setting sun. Her face is pressed against a strong back and her hands have automatically found their way to a leather belt.

It is, indeed, highly scandalous, and she's glad for the cool armor against her rapidly heating cheek.

_Should I stop?_

Maker, no, Josephine thinks. She never wants this moment to end. She wants to sink into the scent of the forest, whirl about like a lost leaf in the stormy seas of the other woman's eyes, fall headfirst into the dense canopy of Ellana, trusting she would catch her. She feels, too, a sincere and heavy relief that she even has this moment with her, that they have survived the day and found this little eternity hidden in the folds of their busy lives.

_Should I stop?_

Josephine thinks, perhaps, the problem is less whether the other woman should stop and more that the world seems to stop for her.

* * *

Of course all things must end, and once back at Skyhold, Josephine finds herself longing for the stoic gaze of the hills and bawdy rapport. Anything would be better than the sharp, steely fury projected at her from Leliana. She has endured several long minutes' worth of scolding for running headlong into battle without a second thought. The ambassador is irrationally angry at Leliana for interrupting the glee-filled haze she'd been in since returning.

"And what happened to 'niceness before knives?'" the Spymaster asks coldly, still half-obscured by the shadows of the rookery.

Josephine feels herself swell up into an angry hurricane. "Leliana, please." She grips the banister tightly, trying to contain herself. "Do not be so petty. Your agents can tell you that if I had not acted, the Inquisitor may very well have died. There was no time for words, or niceness."

"The Inquisitor has risked death a thousand times and survived. It is likely we could have revived her—"

"Leliana," Josephine says again, frustrated by her friend's incomprehension and at her own inability to articulate precisely why Leliana is so…so… _wrong_. "I cannot explain. I simply knew I must act, and I did. That is the best I can say."

A long silence falls over them both, the fluttering of the birds the only sound. Josephine stares down into the library, catching a few excited murmurs from Dorian as he peruses the shelves. Gratefully, her mind seizes on the new subject—anything to distract her from this annoying and rather sudden display of protectiveness by Leliana. Strange, she thinks, that she nearly considers him a friend now. It makes sense, really, when she thinks about it; their backgrounds are not so different, and she supposes nearly dying together might strengthen bonds rather quickly.

Leliana moves next to her, and Josephine ignores her for a moment, wondering whether Dorian had to attend a similar litany of horrid dances as she did in childhood.

"You came riding in on the same horse as the Inquisitor."

She imagines an adolescent Dorian, clean-shaven and subversively reckless, dancing with whomever he pleased regardless of gender or race. The thought cheers her a bit, and she can't help but smile. She wonders, briefly, what the Inquisitor had been like as an adolescent, as merely  _Ellana_ , without the titles and impressions, long-limbed and perhaps awkward but graceful in the arms of tall tree boughs.

Then she realizes what Leliana has just said, and the smile slowly sinks into itself.

"Yes, I rode in on her horse," Josephine says steadily. Her years as a bard and ambassador are particularly useful in these moments, when all she wants to do is blush and ramble about  _chevaliers_  and damsels and silly stories. She deftly sidesteps the question behind Leliana's statement. "We really must work on obtaining better carts in case visiting dignitaries need to borrow one. I thought my teeth were going to crack."

"Josie." There is warmth in the voice now. It is accompanied by a soft understanding and a gentle reprimand, and Josephine sincerely wishes she were anywhere but here, in this moment. This isn't fair; time is only supposed to move this slowly around Ellana. Josephine allows the air to thicken with unsaid words, unwilling to give Leliana an inch. Really, she feels a bit disappointed that Leliana refuses to play the Game with her and be coy. "My agents have…noticed things."

 _"Noticed things?"_  Past and present blur into one confusing moment for Josephine, and her diplomatic mind finally begins to make sense of a long-unanswered puzzle. Leliana's frustration at Josephine's constant worrying over the Inquisitor's well-being…the hostility between the Inquisitor and Leliana when the assassins were hunting her…Leliana's agents following her everywhere…Leliana's anger at Josephine attacking the bandit…

"Maker," Josephine says, caught between amusement and a hot mixture of anger and embarrassment. "Have you been protecting me from the  _Inquisitor_? What threat could she possibly pose?"

"A more dangerous one than you may think," her friend replies. There is a quiet resignation in the voice, laden with memories and regrets.

Josephine feels her face tense in frustration and confusion as she tries to find the meaning behind Leliana's words. But she's stifled by something she has not wanted to admit to herself, something she can't acknowledge, something filled with memories and regrets. "I do not understand," she says finally, trying to ignore the trembling truths hiding just beyond her friend's gaze. "She has merely provided…leadership, and friendship, and assistance when I needed it, as she does for all of the Inquisition. Do you think she is going to corrupt me? Turn me into a weapon?"

No, that can't be right; Leliana knows the Inquisitor's love for violence is rather limited. Her friend is silent, and she feels her gaze burning into the side of her face.

The ambassador's mind works quickly, trying to put the pieces together, trying to determine what Game Leliana thinks the Inquisitor is playing. She runs through her precious catalogue of images, of the Inquisitor standing against tall, imposing mountains, of her face gilded by fire, of the charming mischief she exudes at times, the gentle friendship and support at others. She considers, too, the fight between Leliana and the Inquisitor over her safety, the strange protectiveness; and, unwillingly, despite her best efforts, she thinks of gentle but strong arms around her, the smell of wood, intriguing and subtle and impossible, the scent of the forest of feelings in Josephine's heart.

She remembers Leliana had once held feelings for another hero in Thedas. Perhaps still does.

Suddenly, she recoils as if she'd been struck, an awful clarity descending on her, and she wants to run, to hide, to sink back into the shadows where she can go on with her harmless fantasies of  _chevaliers_  and damsels. She feels like a child, and resentment and shame boil up at the other woman for dragging her idle daydreams into the light.

"You think she is going to…harm me. Emotionally," Josephine murmurs shakily, turning to her friend, and the solemnity and quiet of the other woman's face is all the answer she needs. "Leliana, that's—there is nothing—I do not…" But she cannot even make herself say the words, knowing as soon as they form in the back of her throat that they are too heavy, too untrue to ever be spoken. Finally, she blurts out a long-held impression: "The Inquisitor is a terrible flirt. That is all."

She feels a bit ashamed to have admitted to noticing such actions, of caring enough to notice, but Leliana's lips purse in a way that tells Josephine she has noticed it as well.

"Perhaps that is all it is," the Spymaster allows. Her voice is full of sharpness now, an old sharpness that seemed to have vanished after the Inquisitor had helped her with Chantry matters. "But perhaps that is not all. Either way, her actions—her words—are dangerous. Not only to you, but the Inquisition. We cannot afford to have either our Inquisitor or our ambassador distracted from their duties. We cannot allow anything to affect her judgment. Or yours."

A swell of righteous indignation stirs her heart. "Affect her judgment? If you believe the Inquisitor is so easily swayed, you must not pay attention during our meetings." Her friend opens her mouth to argue, but the ambassador continues on, an angry heat fueling her words. "And I— _this_ —her terrible—" Josephine struggles to name the behavior, unwilling to admit to herself what it may be, but desperately needing to make Leliana understand. "Her 'actions,' as you say, are not distractions. She acts this way around everyone because she is constantly surrounded by death and decisions. As much as we need her to save Thedas, she needs us to save her from the burden of that responsibility." Josephine remembers a cold night on a mountain top, figures bowing before the Inquisitor, and Ellana's face shuttering closed in horror. "So she flirts, and jokes, and solves other people's little problems, to forget, or perhaps to feel like she is not just a title, or for any number of reasons. If you cannot see that, I have sorely underestimated your abilities."

By the end, she is out of breath, her face flushed, and the only sound is the cooing of the birds. Even the library seems to have gone silent, and Josephine begins to worry how much her words have carried and feels embarrassment creep over her. How many times would she allow herself to lose her composure over the Inquisitor?

For a brief moment, she thinks Leliana may be right, but she quickly discards that idea. She is certain, now that she's said it, that the Inquisitor truly does need her friendship—everyone's friendship, she quickly adds—and she will not abandon her over fears of losing her edge in the Game.

Leliana's gaze pierces her and Josephine feels uncomfortably exposed. Then Leliana surprises her by merely nodding to herself.

"Very well," she says. "I imagine we both have other duties to attend to." Josephine stands still, nonplussed, having expected at the least a taunt for having so thoroughly lost her composure rather than a rather placid dismissal. But her friend merely turns to papers on her desk, shuffling through them and contracting her brows in concentration. "With the threat ended on your life, we must return our focus to the upcoming peace talks in Orlais."

Halamshiral. Josephine feels the dream-like quality of the last few days recede, and her duties as an ambassador once again flood her mind. They have much to prepare, and she has quite a lot to do to ensure they do not cause a diplomatic incident at the Winter Palace.

"When you see the Inquisitor next," Leliana interrupts her musings, "would you please ask her to see me? It is time-sensitive."

Now back to her duties, her role, Josephine simply assumes Leliana is thinking of Inquisition matters. "Of course," she says, composing herself once again. "I will begin preparing for the peace talks."

Whether it is because Josephine has stifled her own tiny, fledgling wants, or because she has so thoroughly returned to her roles and duty, Josephine does not realize Leliana may want to speak to the Inquisitor for reasons unrelated to business.

And so, when Ellana appears hours later, finally rid of red streaks and with eyes full of starlight, Josephine immediately sends the Inquisitor to the rookery without a second thought. She feels only a twinge of regret at the lost opportunity to converse.

Josephine does not realize that she will soon become very distracted indeed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back to the realm of canon, now. This chapter follows Josephine's romance plot-it is triggered immediately after the player character speaks with Josephine (who tells you to speak with Leliana) and then has a conversation with Leliana. I may have done it a bit differently if I was going totally off-canon, but I think I can still work with it as it happens.
> 
> Either way, I hope you enjoy it. I had to revise my prose quite a bit in this one-it came out a bit clunky the first time around.

Though she believes she understands the Inquisitor better than most at Skyhold, Josephine finds her frustratingly impenetrable at times. Ellana's face has a habit of smoothing over into a calm blankness and her eyes often seem to wander to the horizon, seeking something there that Josephine cannot fathom. She wonders, sometimes, if the other woman is searching for her clan, or at least for an approximation of that feeling, and so her gaze wanders to the natural world outside the stronghold, longing for something just out of reach.

Josephine doesn't really know, though. And so when the Inquisitor walks in and shuts the door behind her, Josephine doesn't expect anything, at first, taking in the blank face. She assumes she has just returned from discussing whatever Inquisition matters Leliana felt urgent, but the other woman stands silently for long moments.

This has happened once or twice before, the Inquisitor escaping into the quiet of Josephine's office, the eye of the storm just off-center from the fervent activity of the hold. So the diplomat continues with her papers, allowing the other woman to gather her thoughts.

Several moments pass in silence, only the unpredictable snapping of the fire penetrating their small moment of calmness. Finally, footsteps scuffle across the floor. They are worn and hesitant, almost tired. Josephine glances up expectantly, but the Inquisitor's face is quiet. Yet, underneath the surface, there is a windy sort of chaos in her eyes—Josephine can't help but notice her eyes, beautiful and remote and unpredictable—at once crinkling slightly in amusement, at once stormy, at once bright in the firelight.

"Well," Ellana says, and her voice cracks on the word, betraying the strange combination of amusement and distress in her eyes. "Leliana just gave me  _quite_  the speech."

Josephine feels her face go numb.  _Leliana_.  _Speech._  "What about?" she asks, rather calmly, she thinks, but somehow she already knows the answer. The fire pops and she jumps, but the Inquisitor doesn't notice, her gaze looking somewhere just above Josephine's head, as though trying to memorize the titles of her volumes.

"About us."

_Us._

_Us._

The word drums in Josephine's ears like a frantic, little hovering hope beating against the walls of her mind.

_Is there an "us" to talk about?_

But she allows the fluttering hope to beat itself against the walls futilely and instead focuses on her rising ire. How could Leliana do this? How could she expose her so? What had she said? Josephine's mind reels and, forcing herself to respond before the Inquisitor begins to assume something, anything, she sighs in aggravation.

"Oh, she is  _impossible_ ," Josephine groans. Casting about for some way to buy more time to think of something to say, to somehow salvage the situation, she suggests, "Might we discuss this somewhere more private?" Her voice has gone irritatingly husky and she clears her throat, realizing, too late, how that might sound. How she might want it to sound.  _Somewhere more private._

_Maker._

Panic begins to overcome her, not unlike that day on the road when the bandits had attacked, and she finds herself on her feet without really knowing how she got there. Time is doing that  _thing_  again, where it frustratingly refuses to move at a normal pace, inching forward both slowly and frighteningly quickly. The Inquisitor is studying her with a calm, penetrating gaze and Josephine looks anywhere else, her eyes wandering to the nearby window, but the noble horizon of the mountains only reminds her of that day they'd spend on the Inquisitor's balcony. And, worse, Ellana suggests they go to her quarters, and a warmth that is not entirely embarrassment overcomes Josephine.

Somewhere private. That is all she means, Josephine tells herself. Privacy. They will agree Leliana has surely overreacted to harmless flirting that was entirely…well, mostly, anyway…one way. Just harmless flirting from a charming woman who needs some way to relax.

She finds herself on the stairs up to Ellana's quarters and the realization causes her to halt midstep, the toe of her boot catching on the edge of the next stair. A warm, sure hand reaches from above to steady her, and, when they resume climbing, she counts the stones in the wall. Anything to avoid looking at the strong line of the other woman's shoulders, the quick surety of her step, the graceful arch of her spine, the noble sweep of her ears…

"Josephine?"

Her name is honey on the other woman's lips and it is so, so sweet.

She realizes they have reached the top of the stairs and when their eyes meet, time slows again, and Josephine wants to hear her name again, wants to hear anything at all, really, in that lilting voice.

Mentally shaking herself, Josephine firmly repeats in her mind that this is simply a way for them to address Leliana's ridiculous notions and move on without potential awkwardness. It still baffles her, though, she thinks as they move into the Inquisitor's quarters and in front of the fire—why did Leliana feel as though their interactions posed such a threat?

They sit on the couch and Josephine ensures that there is a respectable distance between them. It is getting dark, and it is silent, except for the fire, and she allows the looming night to hang heavy over them. It feels safe, somehow, and again she wonders what Leliana could have had to fear. The panic slowly begins to leave her, though it leaves behind a nervous clamminess that she subtly attempts to press away on her clothes.

When she looks up, Ellana is studying her with that same face, paradoxically calm but stormy, expectant, somehow.

Josephine takes a deep breath. The Inquisitor may be very brave, and very courageous, but it is Josephine who does the talking, after all. And the sooner she gets this over with, the sooner she can finally get those idle daydreams and memories of  _chevaliers_  and horses and hand kissing out of her mind.

"So," she says, or at least attempts to, but it turns out her throat has gone dry and maybe she isn't really as calm as she thinks. Clearing her throat, she tries again. "So," she says, and pretends the heat in her cheeks is from the fire. "What did our omniscient, omnipresent Spymaster say, exactly?"

The Inquisitor shifts a bit, looking for a moment like the lanky, awkward teenager Josephine imagined earlier that day. It makes her smile, for a second.

"She said," Ellana starts, looking around at the fire, into the dark of the ceiling, out to the balcony, then back to Josephine, "that I have been paying you a lot of compliments." Well, Leliana might be correct there, Josephine thinks, but Ellana compulsively compliments everyone. "And that…you were here to be a diplomat, not to be toyed with."

That makes Josephine pause and her hands clench around the silk of her dress. " _What_?" she gasps, and the Inquisitor gives her a sort of wide-eyed look of concern that might have been comical in any other situation. "I— _toyed_? Like some—some object? A child's plaything?" Did Leliana think so little of Josephine that she'd believe the Ambassador would allow such behavior?

"And," Ellana hurries on, as if worried Josephine might conjure some sort of dark magic purely by the force of her rising rage, "that you may know the courts, but you are innocent in love."

Shame and anger prickle up her spine and into the back of her head, a red haze dripping down into her vision. She begins to move, gets to her feet, paces frantically across the floor, trying to shake the sharp sensation out of her head and trying, most of all, to avoid the other woman's gaze. "Leliana said I was an  _innocent_ in love?"  _Leliana said "love"?_ No one had said anything about—feelings—or—or anything other than compliments and flirting and suddenly she was bringing love into it. Or Josephine's rather embarrassing lack of experience, for that matter.

Any attempts she'd ever made at it had failed—

_Red covering her hands at the bottom of a stairwell, confused faces pulling her away, thanking her for stopping the other bard. She hadn't loved him, hadn't really liked him all that much, but he had made her feel special, for a few moments, anyway._

Or the other time—

_Her eyes burning as she watched a slim figure dash by, holding hands with a larger one. "I could never—I'm betrothed." The other girl's words from the week before rang in her ears and when it began to rain, she heard it over and over again each time a rain drop splashed down onto the cobblestones of the street. She didn't understand, didn't see how their late study sessions together could have been anything less than what she'd imagined, filled with long looks and overly convenient brushings of hands. And that one time she had leaned in, bravely, to see how the ancient poems tasted on the other girl's lips. The words had been dusty and hesitant against her mouth and made young and new again in the long moments of their embrace. Then, suddenly, a letter from home, and Josephine had been forgotten along with the lost tomes of a bard no one knew the name of…_

There were more, too, but Josephine's memories are cut short by the somewhat amused voice of the woman in front of her. "More or less." There is a tiredness in the statement too, and Josephine suddenly feels sorry for her, having been dragged into this by an overly protective friend.

Still, though, she cannot believe Leliana would, even after their earlier conversation, believe Josephine thinks this is more than it is. That Josephine has somehow, once again, placed her heart where it would surely be crushed. Josephine learned her lesson years ago, on the streets of Orlais, and Leliana should know that by now.

And so she turns in frustration to the mountains slowly darkening in the late evening, gazing at them with a longing she can't let the other woman see, before a helpless frustration over comes her and she realizes that she cannot put it off any longer. She must address…this, whatever it is they have, though it is silly and harmless and something that exists only in these stolen moments between time, in darkness or starlight or in the quiet of the mountains.

"Of  _all_ the…" She stops, words failing her for a moment. "I am  _quite_  capable of understanding our association!" she says finally, her voice raised and pinched at the end, her breathing erratic.  _Association_. It makes it sound like a business contract, but she can't take it back now, and Ellana is staring at her again, her eyes shuttered like a forest canopy, calm and patient but wary.

Josephine forces herself to breathe, to at least attempt to explain her erratic thoughts—anything to stop the rapid beating in her chest. "I've…never thought your intentions were overly romantic, Inquisitor, I…I assure you." She sees the other woman start at the title, and Josephine feels guilty at having used it, particularly after what it had cost them to become familiar in the first place, but she needs it, needs to be able to distance herself some way in the quiet intimacy of the approaching night.

Most of all, she needs to give Ellana—the Inquisitor—an exit, a way to graciously, and charmingly, leave the conversation and acknowledge Leliana's flights of fancy.

There is a long pause as they gaze at one another, Josephine waiting expectantly, almost wishing for the final end to her silly little daydreams. The other woman leans forward, her eyes asking a question of Josephine's, looking for some answer just like that night all those months ago. This time, though, whatever she finds makes the shutters drop away.

And, miraculously, a familiar little light enters those eyes, the fire casting once again a mischief over the handsome face.

"Would my intentions be unwelcome if they  _were_  romantic?" the other woman says, her voice low, low like a whispered name in her ear, low like a hopeful prayer given to the coming dark. Low like fire in the wind, like the voices of trees. Low in Josephine's abdomen, where they settle and burn, kindling for a thousand tiny hopes that fragment into a thousand dizzying thoughts.

"What?" she blurts out, then realizes how that may sound and she doesn't want to ruin whatever this might be, but she also worries it's too good to be true, this moment, this woman, this frustrating and noble and courageous and rather unfairly attractive woman who is really so terrible at flirting and Josephine can't really tell if she means it, even now. "Oh—no…that is…" She casts about, feeling rather woozy, looking to the stones in the wall again for assistance before realizing that they can't really help her this time. "We've only just…"  _We've only just met._

She stops herself, thinking about all these half-moments together, hidden like gasps in between the great yawning chasm of their battle against an everlasting night, and realizes time is no measure for anything. So she starts again: "I didn't want to presume you…harbored any…tender feelings for me."  _Tender feelings?_  (Really, she thinks, she must throw away those  _chevaliers_  tales.) It's not something she's ever really let herself consider, not until her disagreement with Leliana—it's something she's left fluttering in the roots of her heart where it grew and grew, quietly, unseen by anyone. The fragile hope that maybe this web of moments, this shifting tide of advance and retreat, might mean something. The moments in between the terrible flirting, the ones besides the seemingly harmless compliments. But…what if that hope had been right, all this time?

_The Inquisitor, rushing in headstrong and noble and foolish, defending her from a stubborn noble in Haven even though Josephine could handle it._

_The Inquisitor looking to her for an answer, maybe an escape, the night Haven burned to the ground under the force of a dragon's terrible anger._

_The Inquisitor giving her the most convenient and comfortable room._

_The Inquisitor stopping by more and more frequently, sometimes to talk, sometimes to gaze pensively out of her windows._

_The Inquisitor laughing with her after a long, impossible time in the Fade._

_The Inquisitor arguing with Leliana, choosing Josephine's convoluted plan over a more efficient one._

_The Inquisitor's desperate fear at her near-assassination._

_A pair of trembling prayers: Josephine. Ellana._

_Josephine and Ellana._

_All of the stolen touches._

The fragments of hopes descend on Josephine all at once, nearly staggering her as she realizes this may not have been merely fun at all. But the sudden ocean of hopes and daydreams is frightening, paralyzing, and—

"I won't deny a certain captivation, Josephine."

_Josephine. Josephine…and Ellana._

It is the sweetest thing Josephine has ever tasted in the air and she wonders what her name tastes like on the other woman's mouth, and knows it would not taste dusty or worn like an old bard's poems.

Her mind catches up with the rest of the sentence, replays it frantically, and her heart stutters, rages against the hesitant walls she's placed around it, and she finds there's not enough air, again, may never be enough air. She wonders how the other woman commands the world around them so well, makes it bend and flow and curve so that this moment seems to stretch on and on into the waiting night.

She realizes she has walked away, suddenly desperate for distance, suddenly nervous that maybe it's the Inquisitor who has entertained too many daydreams, that maybe it's the Inquisitor who may not understand. She turns to face the Inquisitor who looks frustratingly calm, still. "But we haven't even known each other a few short months. How  _can_  you declare this liking for me—" (liking—there is no better word—she doesn't know what "captivation" means, really—she doesn't know what any of this means) "—after such a brief time together?" Josephine asks feebly, desperately, knowing as the words leave her throat that they are weak, that months or years between any two other people could not have created the forest growing between the two of them.

"I've never met anyone whose presence affects me like you do."

_Anyone?_

The word ignites a thousand more tiny hopes in the recesses of her mind.

Ellana is smiling slightly, her eyes warm and lit with something other than fire and Josephine is warm too, lit from the inside, a hundred thousand thoughts and daydreams igniting into this one real, blessedly real moment.

"Perhaps it just means I'm a hopeless romantic," the elf says, looking almost embarrassed as she shrugs, but her eyes don't leave Josephine's face. "But…there you have it."

And it may as well be daylight to Josephine because there is warmth and light everywhere, from her fingertips to her eyes, coloring everything in reds and oranges and magnificent blue, the blue of the other woman's eyes that are no longer stormy, no longer shuttered or hidden or mysterious.

Perhaps they are both hopeless romantics, Josephine thinks, but her strict strategic mind repeats their conversation:  _I won't deny a certain captivation._

So she tempers her unruly heart, tries to navigate her way through the forest sprung up between them because there's still a part of her that worries Leliana may be right. That maybe she, or both of them, will only be hurt in the end, that the endless night might swallow them whole in a breath of fire.

She settles on a nearly neutral statement. "I won't object to a…closer relationship between us," she says, but still she can't help herself, can't keep back the rising tide of warmth and humor and adoration, and so she flirts: "…my lady." And barely, just barely, she stops herself from bowing and kissing Ellana's hand because really, that would be too much, and her voice is already low and husky again and she mentally blames the fire for drying out the air. "If that sounds agreeable to you," she finishes, attempting to reclaim some of her dignity as a diplomat.

"Nothing would make me happier."

And then the Inquisitor is stepping close to her again, this woman who is both legend and person, elf and symbol of hope and strength, this woman who is noble and selfless and brave, beautiful and handsome…and, somehow, unbelievably, interested in a bard-turned-diplomat from a flailing noble family. Josephine can't help but feel her eyes close slightly, can't help but lean forward, anticipating the other woman's presence, needing her to be close, needing the dizzying happiness threatening to drown them both.

"Well, then…" she murmurs, deftly placing responsibility for what happens next on Ellana.

"Josephine…" the elf whispers, this time less a prayer than an invitation, a plea, one Josephine is powerless to refuse, and then both of them are leaning in.

When their lips touch she feels herself crumble into fragments until all that's left is Josephine Montilyet, not a lady, not a diplomat, but a person with a trembling heart. A person being kissed by, perhaps, the most attractive person in Thedas, whose lips are incomprehensibly soft, whose sudden, fervent attention nearly sends them both backwards. There are arms around her, and the Inquisitor's lithe frame is pressed against her own, and the low, low heat in Josephine's abdomen spreads all the way to her toes until, of its own volition, her leg pops and she steadies herself on the strong frame. It is all she can do to keep their pace steady and slow, a huge, rising passion nearly making her frantic, but she contains herself. She wants to savor this moment, savor Ellana, lose herself in the slow and steady softness against her lips because she knows the night will come eventually.

_Maker help me._

Josephine learns that her name tastes like sunlight shining through leaves and that it is, indeed, the sweetest taste in the world.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for my exceptionally long absence. I had a lot of school work to do and I felt pretty insecure about my writing for a bit, so it was a little easier to work on a couple of other projects. But I'm done with school for the summer, so I should be back to my usual pace of updates at least once a week. In any case, here's the next chapter! It feels very much like a "filler" chapter, but there are a few important things that happen, I promise. Lots of fluff ahead. And next chapter: The Winter Palace! Finally...I think it's been mentioned in the last 6 chapters or so. I'm not super happy with how this turned out, but if I don't put it up now, I'll never get back into the swing of things.

Josephine comes to realize that the Inquisitor is trouble (and, more troubling, the thought carries with it a rush of warmth that feels too high in her chest to be simple attraction).

Josephine has a lot of work to do. Josephine needs to prepare the others for the talks and the ball, Josephine needs to coordinate their travel schedule, Josephine needs to determine the dress code for the upcoming trip…

Josephine has a lot of work to do, but all she can think about is kissing the Inquisitor. All she can think about is the long moments of achingly soft meetings and partings. The twilight had made it all seem ethereal, and she almost can't remember it now in the bright and piercing light of day.

So she lingers on it, replaying it over and over in her mind to try to make it a reality. Each time she does there is simultaneously the sweet realization that it did indeed happen and a bitter, creeping fear of the unknown future ahead of her.

They had parted without saying much. Josephine's hands had rebelliously slipped along lean shoulders, where they had previously been obediently still, before she stepped away and remarked on the time. She left with her face flushed, a pair of eyes turned smoky with something Josephine won't put a name to following her as she left. All she can think about is the lithe figure leaning casually against the doorway as she hurried back to her desk, certain everyone would be able to read precisely what just happened on her face.

She worries again that Leliana may be right, that this will be a distraction. It is certainly distracting her now, anyway, but somehow she doesn't mind, not really.

When they have their next meeting, Josephine allows her eyes to linger on Ellana, who is otherwise distracted by a heated argument with Leliana about the Grand Duke and his motivations. Josephine knows she should be saying something, but there will be time to argue later. She can tell by the stubborn set of Ellana's jaw—how many times has she studied that strong line, the determined angle?—and the firm press of Leliana's mouth that the argument will simply follow itself in circles.

Instead, her eyes trace where her hands had slipped the night before, along the other woman's shoulders, and she thinks back to several drawings provided to her of possible dress for the Inquisition.

"Aha," she murmurs, making a quick note to herself.

"Josephine?" Cullen prompts, and she jumps a little, nearly believing she had faded into the shadows for a moment.

Suddenly all eyes are on her, and though Ellana's jaw is still angrily clenched in that way that secretly makes her fingertips tingle, the elf's eyes have turned that low blue of twilight, the same color that had followed her out the door the previous evening.

Josephine feels her breath hitch, and all that comes out is a high-pitched squeak. Her eyes instead move to Leliana, hoping her friend's familiar face will provide her some composure, but the Spymaster is giving her a look that is half-exasperated and half-amused in spite of herself.

 _She knows_.

Of course she knows. Josephine sometimes wonders if there is anything Leliana does not know.

Clearing her throat and trying to collect her tattered dignity, she turns to Cullen, trusting she can at least seize on his predictable obliviousness as a point of strength. She taps her notes anxiously with her pen. "We will need to use Gaspard's invitation and put up with him for the time being, though I certainly believe he is playing a Game of his own." Her neutral statement seems to placate the other women, and she allows herself to relax somewhat, her pen tilting back off the paper. "In the mean time, I have invited a seamstress and tailor to Skyhold to take measurements for the peace talks."

Without changing expressions, the three faces in front of her manage to groan silently with their eyes.

Determinedly ignoring their reluctance, Josephine forges on. "It has been difficult to find outfits that will present uniformity and dignity to the Orlesian court while also allowing the Inquisitor to move freely in the event of an assassination attempt. I have selected what I believe to be the best option." Yes—her choice is purely functional. That's what she'll say when the Inquisitor and her party inevitably complain, anyway; they never have to know her choice was made mostly to highlight the Inquisitor's shoulders.

She makes sure not to linger too long on Ellana's eyes, worried that doing so will immediately cause her face to burn in a dizzying mix of embarrassment, want, and something else—that nameless forest in between them, the deep roots that seem to hum whenever they enter the same room.

So they conclude the meeting, Josephine admirably ignoring Cullen's mutterings about trying to get Sera to wear any sort of formal clothing and Ellana's quips about whether Iron Bull would consent to wearing a shirt.

She makes her way to her desk and watches the others file out in the corner of her eye. She shuffles a few papers, then finds the order form and begins filling it in quickly and deliberately.

It takes a few moments for her to notice she is not alone.

Josephine knows who it is by the humming in her toes and fingers, by the sudden vibrancy of the air and the leap in her heart.

"Josephine."

She will never get tired of hearing her name in that tone, and she allows herself a brief moment to savor it, nearly tasting the other woman's voice on the back of her tongue and on her lips, a ghosting memory of the night before.

"Ellana," she says, and her throat clenches around the name, releases it in a pale sigh compared to her usual confident tone. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels she should be frustrated at the other woman's consistent ability to render her greatest asset, her words, entirely useless. Everywhere else, though, certainly doesn't seem to mind. She raises her eyes and finally lets herself drown in the light tide of emotions in the other woman's eyes.

She has grown used to seeing it now, that roil of thoughts and feelings beneath the typically calm and sometimes mischievous surface.

There is a heavy silence for a long moment, with Josephine absent-mindedly shuffling papers, waiting for the other woman to collect her thoughts. She doesn't mind the silence, but it is difficult to distract herself, uncertain what will happen when the elf speaks again.

Finally, the other woman releases a sigh and Josephine finds her papers pressed into the desk by a familiar firm hand. She looks up, and Ellana is leaning toward her, gaze intent and uncertain.

"Josephine," the other woman laughs a little at the heaviness between them, and the sound settles somewhere in the base of the ambassador's spine. "Come with me?" She holds out her hand, and the image blurs before her eyes—

_"Would you care to join me on my valiant steed?" the Inquisitor had said, peering down at her from her horse uncertainly, the hand a hesitant offering into the chasm between them._

Just as before, Josephine finds herself taking the hand without thinking, and the papers she had been holding scatter across her desk, leaves fallen from the forest between them. When she's with the Inquisitor, the stresses and worries of her daily duties seem to drift away with each breath the other woman breathes.

 _And, unbidden, a sudden, physical memory—the feeling of lips against hers, of a soft want curling in her abdomen, running all the way to her fingertips which had barely, just barely, twitched slightly on the Inquisitor's shoulders_.

She realizes that they are standing close together, now, and the Inquisitor's presence is immense, filling her mind and senses, and this time, with her hand in the elf's, there is no chasm, no gulf between their worlds—at least for this moment. Instinctively, she begins to lean forward, but the other woman's eyes crinkle in mischief as she leans back quickly, pulling on Josephine's hand. "Not yet," she says, then turns and pulls them both out of the office.

Embarrassed at her own forwardness, Josephine merely follows meekly. She realizes they are about to walk through the main hall together, hand in hand, and she relaxes her grip, expecting the Inquisitor to drop it. Josephine knows, after all, that any interest the elf shows in anyone will be immediately the topic of gossip across all of Thedas. Josephine knows, too, that Ellana protects her life from outside eyes and even seems to keep a sort of veil up between her and her companions in Skyhold.

There is still much about her Josephine feels she doesn't know.

But when Josephine relaxes her grip in anticipation, just as they begin to cross into the busy hall, the Inquisitor tightens her hold wordlessly. Everyone else's eyes feel like tiny, hot points of contact on Josephine's skin, and heat rushes across her cheeks. Conversation ebbs for a moment, too, as they make their way towards the entrance, and this silence is less heavy than it is full, full of questions and shock and inquiries. Josephine feels her palm grow hot, and she tries to avoid eye contact, suddenly realizing that not only would the Inquisitor, the Herald, be a topic of interest, but Lady Josephine Montilyet, as well.

All of that vanishes, though, when she Ellana slows down and slackens her grip. A complicated mix of emotions rushes over Josephine—relief, at knowing the staring may end; disappointment at the loss of the strong palm against hers; fear that the other woman may suddenly feel ashamed of being seen with her under the new scrutiny. Then her thoughts halt as she feels the Inquisitor push her fingers apart, threading her own in between as she proceeds moving again.

Josephine has never realized how intimate touching hands with another person might feel. Their palms are aligned from base to finger, now, and their fingers press into one another so tightly she can feel the Inquisitor's pulse humming in her third finger. It is fluttering, and hesitant, but strong, and Josephine feels as if she has always longed for this, for a touch, for a connection bridging the gap between their worlds, ever since that day on the horse, and before then, probably—ever since she first chastised the Herald of Andraste for allowing others to speak ill of her.

Inexplicably, her throat feels tight, and perhaps it's the realization of what, precisely, it has taken to get them to this point, or perhaps it's the realization that the future remains unclear, dark, stormy, but also full of possibility.

They make their way to a door on the right of the hall, and she chances a glance at the woman's profile. Her jaw is clenched against the intrusive eyes, but when she feels Josephine's gaze, she turns her head and smiles sardonically. "Well," she says with a huff of amusement and exasperation, "you'd think people have been gossiping about my personal life behind my back or something."

"Oh, believe me," Josephine says ruefully as they step through the doorway, "it has been a topic of conversation since we began the Inquisition."

They halt suddenly, and the other woman's eyes have gone round. Her mouth opens and closes a few times. "What…why? Who…?"

Josephine shakes her head and smiles a little.

"What?" Ellana says, moving them forward once again, though a frown has creased the skin of her brow.

"It is always strange to me…how you do not recognize the fascination you inspire in those around you." Josephine had not really meant to say it like that, but it is the truth, really; even their companions are sometimes in awe of the elf. She tries to fight a blush threatening to overtake her once again.

The frown deepens. "It's only because people think the Maker sent me," Ellana remarks stubbornly.

Pulling them to a halt in the doorway, Josephine takes a deep breath before looking into the blue eyes, darkened slightly by frustration. "For some, perhaps," she allows. "But I think you underestimate the effect you have." She tugs Ellana to a stop when she tries to walk again. "You may not think so, but I have been noting it for some time. It is, after all, part of my job," she says with a small smile, "to forge relationships between you and potential allies. But you make that part easy, for which I am—have been—grateful."

The Inquisitor looks thoughtful as she studies her left hand. "I always thought you were the one really convincing people to join. You could charm a nug into doing party tricks." A familiar mischievous glint has entered her eyes as she looks over with a crooked smile.

Unable to stop the blush this time, Josephine laughs a little. "Well, in some cases, yes, particularly with our fledgling relations in Orlais." She does not say the rest: that it is really because of the Inquisitor's ears, the markings on her face, that she has had to step in in Orlais. "But remember all of the people you inspired to join the Inquisition in the beginning, and remember that Orlais would not even be interested in us if it were not for your efforts and actions."

For once, she seems to have made the other woman flush this time, and the elf shifts, her left hand scratching the back of her neck. "I really don't see what the fuss is. Someone had to do it."

Josephine squeezes their joined hands and can't stop the utterly silly trembling of her heart when the Inquisitor squeezes back. "I think that is precisely what others find…captivating," she finishes, intentionally echoing the other woman's from the night before, and feels that low, low burning take its place in her abdomen when the Inquisitor turns an attractive red.

"Ah," the other woman clears her throat, and they finally resume walking. "See? You can even charm an elf." They share a smile, and Josephine leans slightly into the other woman, not even caring as they pass Mother Giselle, who gives a slight start.

They make their way through the garden. Josephine closes her eyes and inhales the scents of the flowers and the fresh grass, of the clean, cool mountain air, of the smell of wood and leaves that lingers around the woman next to her. She feels an anxious knot she didn't know she had untangle inside her.

When she opens her eyes, the other woman is smiling, pulling her onto the stone platform in the corner of the garden. "I come here often to think. I enjoy being here, where there's new life each day." The brief admission knocks the wind out of Josephine's lungs temporarily, knowing the rest of the thought was:  _When I have to kill so much so often. When I have to fight the dead. When I have left everything I've known behind to do it._

The somber thoughts scatter, though, as Ellana turns toward her, and Josephine feels like an adolescent sneaking out of one class or another for a tryst.

Then the other woman's hand is on her face and Josephine's skin heats under its touch in response. She should feel embarrassed, or ashamed, sneaking out here with the Inquisitor, but all she can think about is the way the sun had set across the elf's cheek bones the previous evening, the way the shining afternoon is setting the garden alive around them, the way the scent of the other woman mingles with the soft exhale of fragrance from the grass. Something grows and trembles inside Josephine's heart, then, and it feels a little like hope.

At that, Josephine realizes that she's in trouble. But then the other woman's mouth meets hers, and they slide together, softly, and she tries not to make any noise and tries to forget that literally anyone could see them right now.

"So," the Inquisitor says softly when they part, "you never told me who."

"Hm?" Josephine hums absently, her eyes opening only partially.

"Who they thought I…" she trails off, a red color tinting the tips of her ears. Josephine stares for a moment, transfixed, before the question manages to permeate the foggy haze. Her eyes open all the way.

_Oh._

She laughs and launches into a few stories, editing out her (rather undiplomatic) reactions to other people's assumptions about Ellana's love life. They spend the afternoon alternating between leaning into cool stone and leaning into each other. They muse over the gossip that seems to seep into every corner and nook of Skyhold, and every time the Inquisitor laughs, Josephine sees a bit of the distance in her eyes crumble.

Later, when Ellana turns to her in front of the door to her office at the end of a pleasant afternoon, a familiar glint enters her eye. "Well, they sure got it wrong, didn't they?" she says, before sweeping in to press a light kiss on Josephine's cheek. The moment is brief, feather light, a tiny leaf in the breeze of the other woman's breath whispering across her skin. But it seems to last forever, and there is something in the gesture, something in the look, that makes Josephine's fingers tingle in an entirely different way than when they kiss. Then the Inquisitor winks and strolls away, humming a jaunty tune that Josephine doesn't recognize.

She moves into her office and approaches her desk, cheeks pleasantly warm from something more than sunshine, and pens a note to her sister that, after it's sent out, she realizes contains far too many adjectives describing the Inquisitor.

She lets her head fall into her hands, groaning, as she realizes she will have to speak to—babysit, really—her sister at the Winter Palace. And Josephine is not the only Montilyet capable of making impressions of others.

Trouble indeed.


End file.
